


you've got a pretty way of keeping the sound out

by sastrugi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (as they would be if the mouse didn't own their canonical butts), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, ETL but like in a distinctly "I HATE YOU!!!" "...SURE Jan." way, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Post-TLJ, Rating May Change, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Supremely Stubborn Rey, Unresolved Sexual Tension, a dash of mortal peril at the beginning, oh no we're stranded on a desert planet together, they're both lowkey potty mouths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:46:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29452521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sastrugi/pseuds/sastrugi
Summary: When she breaks the surface of the water, Rey’s ears are immediately graced with a string of colorful curses in no less than three languages. The arm that’s slung across her chest tightens its hold as she's ferried backward, away from the sinking wreckage. She turns her head to the owner of the arm; her ostensible savior currently keeping her alive and afloat.Any lingering belief that she might be dead or dreaming disappears the instant she sees that all-too-familiar scar.Rey may or may not let out a scream.Suddenly, frantically, she starts thrashing around, trying to get away from him, or push him under, or drag them both down trying.“Oh,nowyou start kicking,” a particularly prickly-sounding Supreme Leader Kylo Ren grumbles as he keeps pulling them both to shore.Impossibly, Rey’s day just got worse.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 61
Kudos: 157
Collections: Ijustfellintothissendhelp, Reylo Valentine’s 2021





	1. the descent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jacyevans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacyevans/gifts).



> My SLIGHTLY late submission for #ReyloValentines2021, written for this AMAZING prompt from jacyevans
>
>> _"Set sometime between TLJ and ROS. Rey and Ben end up stranded on the same planet and are stuck there alone, with no way to communicate to their respective camps. Whether they've been able to connect through the Force or have been cut off since Rey closed the door at the end of TLJ is up to you. Give me terse conversations and sexual tension until inevitably, that tension breaks. How it ends is up to the writer - with them going their separate ways or with one or the other giving in and turning sides?"_
> 
> (I'm so sorry that you got stuck with My First Reylo Fictm. I hope the end result doesn't disappoint too much!) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick notes:  
> 1) I originally thought this would be a one-shot of ~8k words. But, suddenly, my initial idea grew legs. And arms. And then it took my lunch money and gave me a swirly in the girls bathroom during recess. As such, I've decided to post this in installments rather than keep the writer of this wonderful prompt waiting. 
> 
> 2) There's a spoilery explanation for the "mortal peril" tag in the end notes of this chapter! Everything turns out fine, but check it out if you're wary. And if I missed any tags, please let me know!

Part I

_ "the descent” _

Rey is an excellent pilot.

She was vaguely aware of this fact when she would run flight simulations on Jakku, but she had few real pilots to compare her skills to (unless the washed up smugglers at Niima Outpost counted, but Rey was fairly certain that the stories they’d regale were tainted by sun madness and hyperbole). It was only when she managed to outmaneuver two TIE fighters long enough for Finn to shoot them down that she understood how exceptional her talent was. 

Now that she’s spent a year with the Resistance and navigated more terrain than she ever knew existed before, Rey is fairly certain she could fly circles around all of the formally-trained flyboys on the base – and Commander Poe Dameron wastes no opportunity to remind them of that fact. 

So, yes – Rey is a kriffing _excellent_ pilot. And the fact that the unrecognizable starfighter that had just been on her tail only managed to blast _one_ of the wings clean off of the derelict G9 Rigger-class light freighter she’s piloting. 

She’s just grateful that she was able to scare the hostile ship off with the ventral cannon before it became lost to the void of space along with the retractable wing it was attached to.

Rey throws the hunk of junk into autopilot and heads down under the grates to survey the damage on the ship’s systems. Being that the ship dates back to the Clone Wars, she counts her lucky stars that the damage incurred seems to be limited to a rupture of the coolant system. 

That is, until she begins to feel the effects of it.

Until everything gets impossibly, irrevocably worse.

*****

“Come on, come on, come _on_ ,” Rey pleads to the tangle of sparking wires and wailing machinery in front of her, fingers losing feeling from the cold. Her words are punctuated by the staccato _clicks_ of her chattering teeth. 

After the coolant system ruptured, other systems seemed to follow its lead. The comms went down first, followed by the tracking system, followed by nav, followed by… whichever alarm just started blaring up in the cockpit, which she can’t check while she’s in the middle of fusing wires back together.

She really, _really_ should have taken Chewie up on his offer to accompany her on her trip.

Rey could probably rewire this whole ship in her sleep, but it’s an entirely different story now. Her reflexes are sluggish from the cold, her teeth chattering painfully as her mind skitters over basic thoughts like a choppy holo losing reception.

She doesn’t know what’s more frustrating: the prospect of dying from hypothermia on a hunk-of-poodoo rickety ship, or fumbling over things that should be second nature to her and having no control over it whatsoever.

She manages to fuse the wires she’s working on back together, which she’s _pretty_ sure are connected to the secondary heating vents.

Secondary heating vents which, of course, take an hour to warm up in normal circumstances. Here, with the coolant system ruptured.

In that moment, something occurs to Rey, sharp enough to cut clean through the cold-induced confusion.

“I’m going to die,” she murmurs.

Of the reckless skirmishes she’s thrown herself into without second thought, all the life-or-death situations she’s faced down with the hardened bravery of a creature born out of desolation and desperation… _this_ is going to be it.

Freezing her ass off on an old freighter that’s been blown half to bits, completely and utterly alone.

Rey _can’t_ let this be it.

With renewed purpose, Rey struggles to stand from her crouched position, using a nearby generator to help her stand. If the navigation system is still working, she might be able to redirect course to the nearest planet.

As she heaves herself through the short corridor to the small onboard hangar, her entire body feels heavy and lethargic despite the panic that _should_ be coursing through her, and her limbs are uncooperative and stiff to the point where she worries that her ankles might roll over her feet entirely.

When she finally reaches the hangar stairs leading back up to the cockpit, she almost makes it to the top before she’s overcome by a sudden, crawling exhaustion and the screaming urge to sit down.

_I just need a minute to regain my strength_ , she thinks, even as her eyelids start fluttering closed and she feels her body sway leftward the moment she’s seated against the railing.

At the very edges of her awareness, the tiny part of her reasoning that hasn’t been frozen over starts raising alarm bells; that little voice knows the absurdity of this need, recognizes it as the blaring warning sign it _should_ be.

The instinctual, animal-like panic that begins at her periphery slogs inward until it floods her mind, even as her body riots against her. She’s running on pure survival instinct, isn’t even _thinking_ , when she reaches into the Force and flings every last bit of her energy – every last hope – at… at _something_.

The something tugs back.

That sensation, that _something_ , feels so familiar. But before her sluggish memory can make the connection, everything goes black.

*****

Rey is awoken unnaturally, by an insistent pull at the back of her mind. but it feels much closer now; it’s a desperate thing, now, _yanking_ at her consciousness like it’s an unruly knot of hair, or a particularly sticky lever.

Almost immediately after she wakes, a thought pushes into her mind so savagely it almost doesn’t feel like her own: The hangar doors. She _has_ to open the hangar doors.

If the heating vents started working when she was out, she can’t tell – her body is still wracked with shivers that feel akin to miniature groundquakes, and pulling herself up the last two stairs into the doorway of the cockpit takes her what feels like hours, but is probably a minute.

The nagging feeling at the back of Rey’s mind gets worse as the cold-induced lethargy starts to take over again, and she looks up to the control panel above her.

_Open the hangar. Open the hangar. Open the hangar._

She can’t stand, could barely even _crawl_ moments ago, but something in her knows she _needs_ to do this. She grabs clumsily at her thigh holster, numb fingers accidentally grabbing the two stubby halves of Skywalker blade before managing to grab hold of her own.

Before she moves, she makes sure she spots the little green light indicating that the forcefield keeping the ship safe the vacuum of space is active (she’s dying, not _stupid_ ). 

Then, with all the strength she can muster, Rey reaches up and uses her saber’s hilt to press the button to open the doors to the hangar.

The hiss of the doors is soon accompanied by a much less familiar hiss, and Rey’s suddenly gasping for air, her vision narrowing in on itself, with black splotches periodically encroaching on her periphery before consuming her entirely.

*****

For better or for worse, Rey registers the next bit in flashes. 

(Later, she’ll wonder if she imagined these brief, flitting interludes entirely.)

In the disjointed spaces between the darkness, she’s aware of:

Pounding footsteps.

Black boots.

A hulking silhouette against the viewport.

Black hair, up close.

A muttered curse, immediately followed by the sensation of something touching her temple, immediately followed by the lull of unconsciousness taking hold of her again–

–until that is hold suddenly, _violently_ broken by the brief, distinct sensation of free fall, followed by splashing impact.

*****

Growing up on a planet as ruthless and unforgiving as Jakku, Rey has heard her fair share of stories about what happens at the very cusp of life. Scavengers who’d miraculously survived would-be catastrophic falls in the bellies of Imperial star destroyers would describe a myriad of different experiences. Many recalled an onslaught of memories, visions of familiar places and faces that meant something to them. Some claimed to have seen a light, or been called to a warmth they couldn’t explain. Others said they felt a gentle presence from beyond the veil, or heard the soothing voice of a loved one long gone. A few just shrugged and said they didn’t feel anything special.

Either all of their stories were bantha shit _or_ Rey is being severely punished because, if she’s dead, the experience is _nothing_ like those scavengers had described.

Her entire body stings, and she’s surrounded by a darkness broken only by streams of light shifting around almost like… water. She’s underwater. 

Rey is underwater and she doesn’t know how to swim. And, if she’s not dead already, that’s about to be a _huge_ problem.

The panicked reflexes and instincts she relied upon when she fell into the cave on Ahch-To aren’t coming back to her now, and something’s distinctly _off_ about this lack of ability in a way she doesn’t have time to assess before someone grabs her across the chest and yanks her up to the surface by her armpits.

When she breaks the surface of the water, Rey’s ears are immediately graced with a string of colorful curses in no less than three languages. The arm that’s slung across her chest tightens its hold as she's ferried backward, away from the sinking wreckage. She turns her head to the owner of the arm; her ostensible savior currently keeping her alive and afloat.

Any lingering belief that she might be dead or dreaming disappears the instant she sees that all-too-familiar scar.

Rey may or may not let out a scream.

Suddenly, frantically, she starts thrashing around, trying to get away from him, or push him under, or drag them both down trying.

“Oh, _now_ you start kicking,” a particularly prickly-sounding Supreme Leader Kylo Ren grumbles as he keeps pulling them both to shore. 

Impossibly, Rey’s day just got worse.

*****

They’re both on their backs on the shore, Kylo having rolled away to a tolerable distance once he pulled her a couple feet up the rocky bank. It’s with no small amount of satisfaction that Rey thinks he probably wants to stay at least a leg’s length away, lest he get kicked again.

Drawing shallow breaths and staring up at the unfamiliar sky of the completely foreign planet she’s just crashed onto, Rey tries to let reality set in without letting the anxiety take hold. The lake stretched out in front of her is in a valley of sorts– or maybe it’s just level ground surrounded by towering cliffs. Barring the blackish lake and the little tufts of grassy weeds that pop up here and there, the whole thing is oppressively beige, like someone took Jakku and carved it out of ragged desert rocks.

There are a disconcerting number of odd-looking lizard-like creatures sunbathing on the shores around them, completely unaware that the two most valuable pawns of the galaxy-wide war have just washed up on their unfamiliar shores.

At the very least, Rey is grateful that everything is _warm_ on this planet. She can see why the strange lizards seem to like this spot so much.

Almost as though he detected her millisecond of peace and couldn’t help himself from stomping all over it by reminding her of exactly who’s lying six feet away from her, Kylo chooses this moment to break the uneasy silence.

“You can’t swim,” he says, like it’s brand new information he needs to inform her of.

Rey takes a deep inhale in preparation to fire off a sarcastic _Oh, do you think?_ at his ridiculously obvious commentary, but her intake of breath is met with a burning tightness in her lungs, coupled with the sudden, violent urge to cough. 

She rolls onto her side to hack up the water that she likely inhaled while she was trying to throw down with Kylo Ren in the middle of a lake.

“Something isn’t right here,” says Kylo, mostly to himself. Rey cracks her eyes open in time to see him prop himself up on his elbows in her periphery. 

Kylo Ren, who’s still mostly on his back, is absolutely _soaked_. His heavy-looking tunic and pants were clearly not intended for taking a quick dip in. Somewhat absurdly, he also looks to be wearing some sort of cape, which is flopped around his neck and behind him like it’s trying to strangle him. 

He looks ridiculous, honestly, and Rey might’ve laughed if only the sight of him in such familiar clothes, with such familiar scars didn’t stir up a storm of emotion she’s tried so, _so_ hard to push down in the year since she saw him last, when she closed the blast doors in his face. 

She’d been so good at blocking his presence, only privy to the occasional pervasive _feeling_ at the edges of her awareness when he was feeling particularly enraged or distraught. 

Even then, she could just pretend those feelings were her own, and she could move on with her life in willful ignorance. 

She should have known he’d find her sooner or later – even with the connection as blocked off as she can possibly manage, even with almost a year of no physical contact and near-nothingness passing through the bond between them, she should have known he’d find a way to slither back into her life and dig up every memory she’s tried so resolutely to forget.

Speaking of memories… Rey’s mind sticks on the last few moments she remembers from the crash: that familiar tugging sensation, the loss of air, the boots, the hand, the gaps in her memory that immediately follow, the _crash_... 

Rey’s limbs are still regaining feeling from the frigid ship, but she doesn’t feel as wrecked as she _should_ after all of that, and a dawning suspicion makes itself known in her chest. For the first time, Rey _truly_ wonders how – and why – Kylo got her out.

She wonders if he intentionally took the oxygen out when his ship came into the hangar. If his ship now joins hers at the bottom of the lake.

She wonders what possessed him to come aboard. What he was expecting to find. What he was thinking when he saw her lying on the floor of the cockpit, clinging to life and probably looking quite literally like hell frozen over.

She wonders if seeing her again fills him with the same vindictive mournfulness that's consumed her since the moment she laid eyes on him again.

“What did you do? When you came onto my ship? You can’t seriously expect me to believe that you just _happened_ to be flying around Wild Space and just _happened_ to see my ship, and it just _happened_ to crash.”

In response, Kylo just… blinks at her. Like one of the damn lizards.

“What. Did. You. _Do._ ” She’s practically growling at this point, voice hoarse from some combination of the ordeal on the ship, the water, and the impatience bubbling up within her. He can’t just _be_ here, this can’t be a coincidence, or an act of benevolence.

Her left hand twitches to the thigh holster under her wraps, ready to arm herself before she remembers how she removed both her working _and_ broken lightsabers from her holster in her desperate effort to open the hangar doors. His own weapon is gleaming at his hip, and she hopes he doesn't notice that hers is missing.

“I didn’t _do_ anything, Rey, other than save your life–”

That's not true. It _can’t_ be true.

“ _Liar!”_ she yells, launching herself at his prone form on instinct, like a particularly scrappy lothcat. 

She’s barely landed on top of him before he’s using his ridiculously large frame as leverage to roll them over, crouching above her and pinning her wrists by her head.

(She’ll think about this bit, later. When the shock has worn off and she’s replaying the events in her head with a sort of detached, clinical precision, her mind will stutter over this particular little moment.)

(When she thinks about it, later, she won’t let herself linger on why she lingers on it, or why her stomach twists in a funny little knot when she does.)

“Will you stop trying to fight me and just _listen_ for one second–”

“Not kriffing likely,” she snarls.

Unlike Kylo, she can’t rely solely on her body mass to get out from under her opponent, and she reaches into that familiar reservoir in the center of her chest to call upon the Force.

Nothing happens.

She tries again, all the while trying to wrench her wrists from Kylo’s grasp with renewed fervor.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she _knows_ it shouldn’t be this hard to call upon the Force, but the deafening pounding of her heart dampens all rational thought.

“Why are you–” his voice cuts off, and she looks back up at him to find his entire demeanor has changed.

The haughty expression has slipped off of his face entirely, replaced with a fear so potent that she’s sure she’d be able to _feel_ rolling off of him if only–

– if only she could feel the Force at all.

Over the panic, the anger, and the wicked ache of her lungs and head, Rey hadn’t noticed the obvious: the thrum of the Force is entirely gone.

Kylo’s wide gaze flicks to hers. “You can’t feel it either.” 

She’s no stranger to him hypothesizing about her feelings and intentions, either through feelings passed between them or other, more intrusive measures. But, this time, it’s different. Kylo’s eyes flick between hers almost frantically, and the air of anxious uncertainty his expressive face is already broadcasting is only amplified when he responds to her brief moment of silence with a pressing and panicked, “Can you? Rey, can you feel the Force right now?”

He’s still on top of her, apparently having briefly forgotten that she was trying to gouge his eyeballs out not thirty seconds ago. The grip on her wrists has slackened significantly, though, and she figures that this is her chance.

She may be able to wield the Force now, but she spent far longer fighting for what’s rightfully hers at the outpost in Niima than she’s spent in this new life of hers. When all is said and done, she has the scrappy impulses of Jakku scavenger. Unlike Kylo, the absence of the Force doesn't leave her feeling helpless.

In his brief moment of distraction as he waits for her answer, Rey angles her head toward the side of his hand – right at the juncture of thumb and forefinger – and _bites_. 

His reaction is immediate–

“ _FUCK!_ ”

– and does not disappoint.

As Rey rolls away and scrambles to her feet, Kylo remains on his knees, shaking his hand out and muttering variations of curses in at least three languages. 

“You _bit_ me,” he says incredulously. It’s almost funny, how he seems so... so _flabbergasted_ by her relatively tame maneuver, even as his face carries a far more permanent reminder of her doing far more wicked things to him.

“Well, you crashed my ship. Fair is fair. Kriff, I would have been justified in chomping your whole stupid arm off.”

Kylo doesn’t break eye contact as he stands, and he somehow manages to make it sound like a threat when he says, “I’m the one who got you out of there. You should be _thanking_ me.”

Not willing to deign _that_ with a response, Rey turns on her heel and stomps off in the general direction of _nowhere near Supreme Leader Kylo Ren_. It might’ve been wise to choose a destination before stalking off, but she can deliberate over which rock to sleep on later. At least once he’s out of her hair, she’ll actually be able to _think_.

As she walks, Rey is torn between two warring instincts; two equally-compelling options presenting themselves to her as she recognizes that, for all intents and purposes, she is very much stranded on an unfamiliar planet until someone or something takes mercy on her.

There’s one part of her that wants to sit by the dark, lizard-filled lake until the Resistance can track her ship and rescue her. This instinct belongs to a starved, hardened, and desperate girl whose ghost Rey will never quite be able to shake.

Her other option is championed by the part of her that’s still standing in Snoke’s throne room, surrounded by fire and corpses and feeling so utterly _burned_ by the broken promise that Ben Solo never truly made in the first place. _That_ part of Rey wants to get as far away from _Supreme Leader_ _Kylo Ren_ as humanly possible.

If the Resistance had been able to track her ship through everything, they could easily send someone for her within three day cycles, maybe even two. She has faith in them.

But, on the other hand, she knows this faith of hers is based on an assumption that’s failed her before. For them to come for her, they would have to believe she survived the crash. They would have to deem her worthy of coming back for.

Rey swallows the tight, heavy feeling that’s beginning to creep up her throat before it can claw its way out and be given voice.

“Where are you going?”

Kylo’s voice snaps her out of her admittedly self-pitying reverie as she continues to walk away. She tosses her response over her shoulder, careful not to look at him as she does.

“I’m going to find shelter in case night falls before the Resistance comes to rescue me. And _you’re_ going to stay as far away from me as possible, preferably sticking to the other side of the planet.”

Unfortunately, Kylo Ren can’t take a hint for the life of him, and is nothing if not annoyingly persistent.

Like a sand flea, or a particularly annoying protocol droid.

“Do you really think going off on your own is a good idea?” Kylo drawls, sounding far too cocky for someone whose eyes were as wide as portholes not two minutes ago when he felt the absence of the Force.

_Kark off_ , she wants to say. _You’re the_ last _person who should be talking about ‘good ideas’_ , she wants to say.

Instead, she yells, “I can’t hear you!”

“You’re acting like a petulant child–”

“I'm too _petulant_ and _childish_ to hear you, sorry!”

Kylo lets out an exhale sharp enough for Rey to hear as she keeps walking away. It’s a pretty impressive feat on his part, but she’s still fully intent on scaling one of the towering cliffs around them if she has to, just to get away from him.

“You’re forgetting that there are two of us here,” he tries, louder now that she’s walking away. It’s a pretty cruel stroke, considering everything he knows about her past. “The Resistance isn’t the only entity that has a valuable asset stranded here.”

Rey finally stops in her tracks, her hands balling into fists at her side before she turns around. She hopes he can feel the Force where he’s standing right now, hopes he can _taste_ the violent annoyance she’s feeling towards him.

Though, if he does feel it, it doesn’t do much to deter that infuriatingly haughty tone from slipping into his voice when he starts speaking again.

“I might be a dead man walking if your _friends_ come to rescue their precious pet Jedi.” (And f _uck_ this guy, seriously.) “But I think we both know what happens in the far more likely event that _mine_ come instead.” 

“You don’t have any friends,” is what her mouth decides to extract from that.

She’s much too far away to know for sure, but she swears his eye twitches. She’d put at least ten credits down on it.

Twitch or no twitch, Kylo soldiers on like he didn’t hear her. “The First Order may not be able to track my ship all the way down, but they’ll be able to trace a pretty clear path here once they notice that their Supreme Leader hasn’t returned from his unscheduled trip to Wild Space.”

Just as Rey opens her mouth to respond, something shifts. It feels like the crackling of an electric storm and a comforting embrace at the same time, reconnecting her to the sense of connection she’d been bereft of just moments prior.

The return of the Force.

She still can’t feel Kylo in it, though, even as she’s staring right at him. Her mind whirs, processing and planning around this new information. Kylo begins to walk towards her, seemingly unaware of the change that’s just washed over her.

“In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if intelligence has already picked up on reports of an unregistered G9 _Rigger_ -class light freighter meandering through Wild Space, originating from a sector with heavy Resistance traffic and heading toward Skywalker’s last known location.”

As he speaks, Kylo prowls towards her, strides slow, measured, and purposeful. Rey tries to maintain the considerable distance she’s put between them by matching his forward steps with her own backwards ones. It’s almost useless; his legs are _unreasonably_ long, strides almost twice the length of hers.

Even so, it’ll get him where she’s suddenly realized she wants him.

“That’s a reach and you know it. They couldn’t possibly know–”

“The First Order has far more resources than your friends ever will. And _when_ they trace the Supreme Leader’s ship here and find none other than the assassin of the _last_ Supreme Leader–”

“That was _you,_ you bastard–”

“They’ll kill you on sight.” A pause. A quick flick of his eyes to her left thigh, where her empty holster sits obscured under the drapery of her sopping wet wraps. “And you don’t have a weapon.”

_Kriff_. Of course he noticed.

Rey stops in her tracks, the cold reality of it setting in.

“I don’t need your protection,” she spits back, even as she feels her instincts acquiescing, understanding that maybe, _just maybe_ , he has a point. 

She changes course. “How did you even get on my ship, anyways?”

“Well, I believe you opened the doors to the hangar, then I flew in,” Kylo’s voice is flat as he adds, “and once I was parked, I proceeded to unbuckle my safety har-” 

“You know exactly what I meant!” she cuts him off, impatience growing in the pit of her stomach. “I’ve kept you out of my head for almost a year. You shouldn’t have known where I was. You shouldn’t have been able to find me.”

As if on cue, Kylo steps over the invisible line she’d noted in her head, that threshold where she felt the Force thrumming through her again. 

The connection she’d so steadfastly boarded up roars to life again, and Rey isn’t sure if it’s more powerful than it was before or if she’s simply unused to the full force of it after so long. 

There’s no way he doesn’t feel it too. He’s stopped moving entirely, still as a statue aside from his hands, which are flexing oddly at his side like they can’t decide whether or not to curl into fists.

It feels like a surrender and a victory all at once.

“Answer my question, Kylo,” Rey says, taking a step towards him this time as she reaches a hand out and starts to _press_ into his mind.

He shuts her out immediately and, like she isn’t worth the energy it takes to explain himself, Kylo turns tail and marches right back whence he came, where the Force and its effects seem to be nullified entirely.

Rey moves her arm out and tries to channel the energy required to try and enter his mind again, to exert her strength over him, stun him, choke him, flick him away, pull him closer, _anything_ –

There’s nothing. 

Now that he’s back within the confines of… whatever that area is, her attempt feels like she hits a wall at the edge of her own consciousness. Like her target no longer exists.

She watches him for a moment, slack-jawed as he blatantly ignores her and starts following the shoreline, careful to stay within the same distance from the water as he goes, only flickering into the Force for a moment before adjusting his course and stepping back into the mysterious hole in the web of energy around her.

He’s feeling around for the Force, she realizes. Trying to figure out where it is and where it isn’t. 

He’s kriffing _investigating_ while Rey is trying to get something, _anything_ out of him that could help her make sense of it all.

“ _Why_?” she spits as she stalks after him along the shoreline, water sloshing around in her boots as her feet kick up sand in the wake of her ire. She has to step over a truly obscene number of lizards as she stomps to catch up with his unbothered gait. ““Why did you know where I was? Why are you _here_? Were you stalking me? Were you _trying_ to kill me?”

Kylo’s response is bone-dry. “Yes. That’s exactly why I did it.” He doesn’t even halt in his tracks as he says it. Doesn’t even look back as his stupid wet capes flops around stupidly. “Being marooned here after risking my life to save yours is all part of a nefarious First Order plot to kill you.”

His condescending, impassive tone frustrates her in a way she’s wary to understand, so she doesn’t try to. 

_“_ Well, I wouldn’t doubt it! _You’re_ the one who somehow managed to blow the ship’s oxygen when you brought your stupid eyeball into the hangar!” Rey is absolutely _incensed_ , at this point. “I had it all sorted until you came.” A lie, in part. “I would have been _fine_.” A lie, in its entirety.

Kylo finally whips around, and the look on his face shows her that he is very much _not_ unbothered.

“Twenty minutes.”

Just as Rey is about to lay into him having the gall to _not make any sense,_ Kylo continues, “You had about twenty minutes to live, twenty-two if you’d been lucky,” he says. “And that’s just the hypothermia.”

“Okay, but the ox–”

“The oxygen supply tank would have ruptured if you _sneezed_ too hard. I'm sure that ancient greaseball the Resistance calls a ship was barely intact in the first place. If my ship coming through the door was enough to undo it, entering atmo would have all but guaranteed–"

“ _I DIDN’T NEED YOUR HELP!_ ”

Rey’s sudden outburst surprises him almost as much as it surprises her, both of them flinching almost imperceptibly before steeling themselves again. Putting their masks back on, such as it is.

“I didn’t want it. Your help.” Her voice is more controlled this time.

“You know what? You’re right,” Kylo drawls, a mirthless and vicious sarcasm dripping from his words. The look in his eyes hardens. “The next time I feel you freezing to death and pleading to me through the Force, I’ll just leave you to it.”

There’s nothing keeping her in place, but Rey still feels trapped. A liquid dread begins to rise inside of Rey, pouring into every corner of her. She tries not to let any hint of it spill. 

“Why did you do it?” she asks him, quieter but no less fiercely. “How did you _know_?”

Kylo’s answer is immediate, and far more honest than she’s comfortable with. “I felt your life force slipping. Through the bond you keep trying, and failing, to close. It felt like you were flickering in and out of existence. Then, it was like you… _pulled_ at me, or something. I didn’t have a choice.” 

Rey’s taken aback at how earnest he sounds, how quickly all traces of anger and aggravation have left his tone.

She more than makes up for it, though.

“That’s not my problem.”

“No. You don’t understand what I’m saying,” Kylo says, stepping closer until he’s less than an arm’s length away. He stares her down with an intensity that leaves her feeling like the hunter and the prey at the same time.

His eye _definitely_ twitches, now.

“You called for me. In that chasm between life and death, _you_ called for _me_ , Rey.” 

Before Rey can identify the emotion that’s beginning to push through the cracks of his careful facade, it’s gone. He sets his jaw again, like his brief moment of... of _something_ never happened. His voice is like steel when he says, “Staying together will be our best option, whether you like it or not.”

Rey glares at him for a good seven seconds before turning away, the need to stop looking at his, well, _everything_ for a moment too strong to ignore.

She can’t stop herself from firing a parting shot over her shoulder. 

“I won’t like it, for the record.”

“Yeah, well, neither will I.”

_Stars_ , it’s like he’s allergic to not having the last word.

Just to spite him, she adds a loud, “Good.”

“ _Good!_ ” he barks right back at her retreating form.

Rey’s eyes roll so hard she’s surprised they don’t spot her brain on their journey. 

The Resistance can’t come soon enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite literal weeks of research, I know fuck-all about the mechanics of starships and it shOWS. Feel free to chastise me about it on the cursed bird app at @/yavin4loko.
> 
>  **EXPLANATION OF MORTAL PERIL TAG:**  
>  Our two space dummies become stranded by way of a perilous crash. Namely, coolant system in Rey's ship ruptures and she becomes severely hypothermic, to the point where she eventually (briefly) loses consciousness. Also, the ship’s oxygen supply gets yoinked when _someone_ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) brings their big dumb butt on board, but Rey is very much out of it and isn’t fully aware for most of it.
> 
> If you want to skip past the more descriptive peril, just start reading from the section that begins with "For better or for worse".


	2. the bend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost: THANK YOU SO MUCH to anyone who left kudos and/or commented on the first chapter. My body is 55% water and 45% pure gratitude, not from concentrate. Also, I'm SO so sorry for being awful at responding to comments on the first chapter; I was quite literally flabbergasted by the kindness.

Part II

_ "the bend” _

It very quickly becomes apparent that Kylo Ren has ever been left to his own devices and forced to survive in the untamed wilderness before.

Rey had managed to avoid him for a few hours as she surveyed her surroundings, at least for the most part. After their spat by the shore’s edge, Rey figured it might be a good idea to get a sense of _where_ , exactly, they had crashed. She started her by walking the perimeter of the lake to get a better sense of its size and scope before she got impatient, choosing to scale the side of the nearest cliff face and circle from above, instead. She silently thanked her years of scavenging and the months she’s spent in the mountains of Svivren for her ability to scale the two hundred-or-so feet without falling and snapping her neck.

In retrospect, she doesn’t know what, exactly, she had been hoping to see when she crested the top of the cliff; maybe a distant settlement, or a comms tower, or a giant, flashing sign that read, “Don’t worry, Rey! The Resistance is coming to rescue you!”

What she _actually_ saw was... a whole lot of nothing. The entire landscape was covered in cliffs, canyons, and valleys, like someone had carved the topography of the place out with a jagged blade. While she couldn’t see down into gorges further away, she couldn’t see a single trace of civilization on the clifftops.

She swallowed her disappointment, and carried on.

It took her about half an hour to reach a slightly lower spot on the cliff only to see _him_ below, his form – stupid cape and all – draped in midnight black and standing in stark contrast to the barren beige landscape. He was inexplicably fondling some sort of pebble (or shell, or something equally small and ridiculous that he had apparently picked up) like he was _studying_ it or something. She could have – would have, honestly – ignored him. Truly.

But then he _looked_ at her, and she couldn’t help herself. She’s only human.

And, in that moment, as she shouted an obscenely offensive Huttese curse at Kylo Ren from two hundred feet above him and made an equally offensive gesture, Rey felt more than a little powerful.

The effect isn’t entirely dissimilar to how she feels now. Her feet are dangling from the edge of a large ledge she’s found – about twenty feet off the ground and accompanied by a natural cavity in the cliffside, about eight feet deep and ten feet across.

As Kylo approaches, Rey looks down upon his ridiculous, caped form from her perch. However, the impulse to make another rude gesture at him is swiftly superseded by the impulse to gawk at him.

“What is _that_?” Rey points to the gnarled twigs he’s just thrown on the ground in front of her. They look like rejected branches from the sad-looking shrubbery muttered sparsely around the lake.

“It’s for a fire,” he answers, like it makes sense. Like _anything_ he’s done on this accursed day has made any sense at all.

She looks between him and the twig pile a few times, dumbfounded.

“You said you were going to find shelter,” he continues. Then, horribly, he points at the ground below her ledge and gestures with what might be considered a “flourish” among particularly rusty droids. “Shelter.”

She has no idea how, or why, this man has the confidence he does.

“On the off-chance that the Resistance doesn’t come by sunset, I am _not_ sleeping down there.” Rey pauses just long enough for another thought to occur to her.

“You and I both know that the Resistance w–”

“ _If_ they don’t come,” she speaks over him, loud enough to drown out whatever vicious words he was surely about to throw at her. “I will be sleeping up here.”

“You’re serious,” he says, tone far too disbelieving for her liking.

Rey figures she has nothing to lose by voicing the question that’s burning on the tip of her tongue – it’s not like he could hate her any more than he already does. “Have you _ever_ done this before?”

“Done what? Crashed onto a desert planet with Forceless bodies of water?”

He deftly dodges the rock she chucks at him.

“No, I have not,” Kylo finally answers honestly, rolling his eyes. He looks down, then, inexplicably tossing _more_ of those useless twigs from his arms onto the terrible, awful, sad twig pile he’s creating. “I’m sorry _I_ wasn’t raised by happabores.”

“Well, I’m sorry I _was_.”

Kylo’s head snaps up the moment the words clatter out of her mouth, and she hurries to cover up the vulnerability she’s just scrounged back up and practically shoved in his face.

“At least the _happabores_ left me with enough sense to know that it’s not smart to sleep that close to a body of water with an unfamiliar tide cycle and an obscenely large lizard population living in it, and that _that_ ,” she gestures to the tragically large pile of twigs, “is the most pitiful attempt at a fire on the whole kriffing planet.”

“I imagine this is the _only_ attempt at a fire on the planet,” he responds, dry and unhelpful and not breaking eye contact. When it becomes clear that _that_ was his only contribution to this part of their conversation, Rey huffs and stands.

“I’m going to get wood we can _actually_ start a fire with,” she announces, standing to make her climb down from the ledge.

When she reaches the ground and turns around, he’s watching her with an eyebrow raised and a slight quirk to the side of his mouth. He looks every bit the arrogant ruler of an unwilling galaxy.

“ _We_?”

“What?”

“You just said ‘ _we’_ would start a fire,” he says, proud and practically gloating. “Why so amicable now?”

Rey, first of all, would _hardly_ call her behavior at the moment “amicable”.

(For a fraction of a second, this discordance pulls at something in her chest. She resolutely ignores it.)

Moreover, she is… not entirely sure how to answer that question herself. In a pinch, she could probably chalk it up to survival instincts and the old adage about safety in numbers.

He doesn’t deserve an entirely honest answer though – particularly not with the way he’s looking at her, like she’s a particularly funny-looking bug he’d like to step on.

“Because,” she says, walking up to him and getting in his face just like he did when they were both soaking wet and fanning the flames of each others’ ire, “I figure that if a sarlacc comes along and tries eat us, I can shove you in front of me and run away while it gnaws through your fifteen layers of dramatic clothing.”

The haughty expression cracks, just a little, and she uses the opportunity to walk away with the tables turned in her favor. When she dares a look back half a minute later, he’s looking down, delicately picking at the bottom edge of his unreasonably thick tunic.

She smirks to herself.

*****

It’s fitting, Rey muses, that night falls violently on the planet where she’s been marooned with Kylo fucking Ren.

Within the span of a few minutes, the sky has turned from that pink-blue shade to a deep, dark wine color. With the sun gone and the stars not giving off enough light to be of any use, Rey finds herself looking down as she walks along the shoreline to avoid stepping on any reptiles. It’s a pointless endeavor, she realizes soon enough, as the lizards that had previously littered the shoreline seem to have retreated into the water, creating little ripples in the water here and there.

Along with the visibility, the temperature has also dropped slightly. It’s not enough to give Rey the shivers, but it _is_ just enough to make her mourn for the spare clothing she left in the ship. Her arm bands and belt are still drying on the ledge, and her wraps have been removed and adjusted to cradle two sizable hunks of driftwood she’s found on the shoreline, leaving her in a high-necked vest and standard ankle-length breeches that don’t quite meet the top of her boots.

She’s willing to admit – to herself and herself _only_ – that Kylo may be onto something by wearing a bajillion layers all the time.

Rey easily scales the twenty feet up to the cliff in the dark, with a long, thin branch between her teeth and the driftwood bumping gently against her ribs in its cradle as she hoists her way up.

“Why didn’t you just use the Force to jump?”

The unexpected sound of Kylo’s voice from a few feet away scares the living Force out of her – figuratively speaking, in this instance – and she’s thankful that her body is already most of the way onto the ledge when she startles.

At least she has half a mind to remove the branch from her mouth before she starts speaking.

“Why would I?” It hadn’t even crossed her mind, honestly.

“Why _wouldn’t_ you?”

“Because I have hands and feet – both of which are perfectly capable of climbing like a _normal_ _person_.” Rey tosses the logs onto the ground with a little more force than necessary, right on top of his stupid fucking twig pile (which he probably carried with him as he leaped up to the ledge like a kriffing _frog_ or something).

“Neither of us are ‘normal’ people, Rey. You know that just as well as I do.”

Rey scoffs. “Oh, I _know_ you’re not.”

Kylo ignores the cheap shot and looks at her face, scrutinizing. “You didn’t even think about using the Force, did you? It didn’t even occur to you. Like you’re not used to using it like that.”

He’s getting too close to one of the very few things she wants, _needs_ , to keep from him. She shuts her own line of thought down, fearing he’ll sense it in that way he always does.

Rey quickly changes the topic. “The lizards went back into the water.”

“I saw.”

An awkward silence hangs in the air.

“ _So_.” Rey claps her hands together, and their quiet surroundings make the sound feel ten times louder than it is. She pretends not to notice him flinch. “Do you know how to start a fire, or does the ruler of the galaxy need my help with that, too?”

Kylo doesn’t need her help; he just uses the Force.

*****

They don’t talk for a while, after that. Not until she has tired of staring at the night sky, quietly waiting for a ship that doesn’t come.

She breaks the silence impulsively, laying on the floor of the shallow cave and pressing as close as possible to one of the walls, her wraps bunched up under her head as a makeshift pillow. “How can I know you won’t try to kill me in my sleep?” she asks, a little more earnestly than intended.

“You don’t.”

Rey sits up, narrowing her eyes at the hulking figure currently crouched next to the fire right outside the niche.

“If anything, I should be asking you that question,” Kylo intones, using the toe of his boot to uselessly poke at the circle of rocks containing the small fire. “I’ve already told you. I wouldn’t have saved your life earlier if I wanted you dead.”

After a deep breath, he stands to his full height, looking at her with an unreadable expression.

The last time they locked eyes over a fire, the air between them felt much warmer than it does now.

Kylo lowers his voice then, eyes burning with something she can’t – or, maybe, doesn’t want to – place. “Rey, I’ve never taken the opportunity to kill you, even when it’s been handed to me on a silver platter.”

Rey doesn’t need to peek into his mind to know he’s not referring to the events of the crash earlier.

She recalls waking up in the same room she knows he’s thinking of. The twisted panic that rose in her gut when she noticed the unmoving body across from her; the only body that hadn’t been there before the burst of light.

She remembers how she crawled over to his prone form to check his pulse despite the splitting headache and searing pain in her arm.

How she couldn’t bring herself to hurt him, even as a sharp resentment began to build a home in her gut, directed at the man who wanted to burn _everything_ , the man who would now presumptively have the power to do just that; the very same man who’d basically been at her mercy back then.

But, just as she couldn’t finish the job on Starkiller Base, Rey had known that she couldn’t – quite frankly _wouldn’t_ – kill him on the _Supremacy_.

When Rey’s attention emerges from the onslaught of her own memories, she’s only a little thrown off to find Ben staring back at her with that same inscrutable expression he wore when she first blurted the question out. Before he responded.

_I’ve never taken the opportunity to kill you, even when it’s been handed to me on a silver platter._

A strange weight settles in the pit of Rey’s stomach, and she swallows, feeling oddly exposed.

“I haven’t either, you know.”

Kylo searches her face for a few moments after she speaks. Whatever he sees there makes him nod shallowly, apparently satisfied and content to keep fussing over the little rocks around the fire.

Clearing her throat, Rey says, “So I guess we’re… good, or whatever.”

“Or whatever.”

Any lingering dread at the possibility of enduring _more_ uncomfortable fireside conversation is quashed immediately, as Rey falls asleep the moment her head hits the wraps.

*****

Rey wakes feeling well-rested, bright sunlight making a valiant attempt at breaking through her heavy eyelids. Through the haze of sleep, it’s easy for her to believe she’s on Svivren, having fallen asleep in her favorite little meditation spot hidden within the mountainside.

Reality comes back to her with the terrible might of a rockslide as she registers a gaping hole in her perception, the air within and around her distilled with the distinct and uncomfortable absence of the Force.

Kriffing _fuck._

Groaning, Rey opens her eyes to the rocky roof of the cave, readying herself to wait for her friends for another few minutes, hours, or maybe even days (or _weeks_ , or _months_ , or…); she’s good at waiting, she reminds herself. It’s fine. It’ll be _fine_.

There’s a black-clad horizontal blob in her periphery, and she immediately identifies it as her unwelcome travel companion. Figuring it’s best to just get it over with, Rey takes a deep breath to steel herself for whatever fresh hell Kylo Ren has decided to reign upon her.

She half-expects him to be awake and staring at her menacingly, like a monster in a children’s holobook, so she’s more than a little taken aback to turn her head and find that he’s… asleep.

Some time after she herself fell asleep, he’s taken off his cape, laying it out to sleep on top of (kriffing _prince_ ). He’d also elected to remove his heavy, quilted tunic and the stiff doublet he wore along with it, both laying at his feet in a heap of black fabric and leaving behind a softer-looking long-sleeved shirt.

Impossibly, he looks… so very _human._ Rey feels almost like she’s intruding on something private as she witnesses him looking so shockingly vulnerable in such a quiet way; a way that she’s never seen from him before.

It’s not quite as shocking, though, as what her sleep-blurred vision belatedly registers.

Sitting up, she rubs her eyes only to open them and finds that–

Yup. Definitely still there.

Inexplicably, there’s a lizard sitting atop Kylo Ren’s sleeping form, square in the middle of his chest like a conqueror staking its claim on some vast, newly-discovered territory.

It’s the first time Rey has been able to get a good look at the creature up close. It can’t be longer than a foot in length, covered in green-brown scales and ending in a spiky tail that’s just slightly too long compared to its body. Four deep-set eyes adorn its narrow face, and thin little nostrils that open and close with every breath. There are similar-looking slits on the side of its face that she can see, though those are closed. Its generously-clawed feet are webbed and far too big for its relatively small body.

The thing is… quite ugly, to be honest. And it’s also currently staring her down like it's trying to see right through to her soul, like it knows that Rey’s innermost thoughts are assessing the merits (or lack thereof) of its appearance.

The whole picture is unsettling but, even more so, extremely curious.

Rey crab-walks away a short distance, experimentally, and the lizard’s eyes track her movements. She can’t parse very much about its energy without the Force, but it doesn’t seem hostile. If anything, it looks a little bored.

When she reaches the edge of the alcove where, without warning, she’s greeted by the feeling of the Force washing over her consciousness with the sweeping suddenness of a seismic charge.

_Huh._

When she shuffles forward, the Force disappears from her once again like it’s been sucked out of some invisible airlock.

Rey stares at the lizard. The lizard stares back at her.

Kylo Ren remains unmoved, sleeping soundly like some imitation of a comically large baby.

At that moment, it clicks. “It’s the _lizards_!” she gasps.

Rey blames what she does next on the adrenaline she feels in the face of her discovery.

A little frenzied, a little wild-eyed, she scrambles forward on her hands and knees, not paying much mind to the body the lizard has seemingly developed an ill-advised liking for. When she’s within arm’s reach of the creature – and, by proxy, the body it seems to have developed an ill-advised liking for – extending her right arm toward the creature, totally consumed by the mixture of excitement and fascination that’s burning within her.

Before her hand can even come into contact with the thing, a different, much larger hand shoots out and grips her forearm, effectively stopping her in her tracks.

Rey internally curses the lizard for choosing Kylo Ren as its perch (and herself, just a little, for not thinking this particular series of movements through).

“ _What_ do you think you’re–” Kylo begins, voice rough from disuse and looking at her with a gaze that is shockingly alert for a person who’s just woken up from deep slumber.

Rey opens her mouth to explain but, within a second, his eyes dart to the lizard perched on top of him. “What the _fuck?!”_

The lizard’s tail flicks him in the chin. Perhaps mockingly. Rey hopes it's mockingly.

Lighting-quick, Kylo lets go of her forearm and grabs the lizard instead, barely touching it before he’s plopping it on the ground beside him. He uses far less force than Rey would have assumed he’d use and, if she didn’t know any better, she’d think he was being careful, as not to hurt the thing.

(But she _does_ know better, thank you very much, so she _doesn’t_ think that at all.)

Unfortunately, he accompanies his delicate lizard-handling with a half-scooch, half-scramble backwards maneuver that has absolutely no regard for the space _she’s_ currently occupying. She has the sense to shove him further to the left before he can slam into her like the human equivalent of bumper speeders.

“I can’t feel the–”

“It’s the lizard,” Rey points to the offending creature.

When he gives her the most _withering_ look she’s ever received from a person who is three-quarters awake at _most_ , she elaborates.

“They’re creating the holes in the Force. It’s the lizards. I figured it out when I woke up and crawled _that_ way and– where are you going?”

With alarming speed, Kylo has rolled to his feet and is gathering up his discarded clothing – cape, unfortunately, included. “We’re leaving. We need to get as far away from those fuckers as possible. Get your…”

He looks over at the wraps she used as a pillow. “... thing.”

Panic sparks high in Rey’s chest, burning bright as a flare. “ _NO!_ ”

Kylo looks at her with questioning, probably-concerned-for-her-sanity eyes.

Rey exhales sharply, collecting herself. “We can’t leave. _I_ can’t leave.”

“Why _not_?” Kylo says. He looks like he’d probably knock her out with the Force and bodily haul her away, if not for the presence of the magical Forceless lizard.

_Because my friends love me. Because they’ll come for me. Because they can’t leave me here, they just_ can’t _._

“One more day,” she implores, voice cracking despite herself. She suddenly feels small and silly and six years old. “If the Resistance left right away, they’ll probably be here tonight, or maybe tomorrow. I… I can’t miss them, when they get here.”

She watches Kylo mull it over for what feels like an eternity.

“ _One_ day,” Kylo grinds it out like it pains him, holding up his index finger to emphasize his point, like she needs to be reminded how much “one” is.

She’ll take it.

*****

Just like the previous day, the two of them go their separate ways for a while.

Rey spends a truly painstaking period of time shuffling around and feeling around for the Force again and again, all the while avoiding heavily-lizarded areas. Eventually, she finds a spot about thirty feet from the shoreline, right at the edge of where she can feel the Force and right across from where her ship went down. Considering that a tiny bit of the surviving wing is poking out of the water, Rey figures that the depth of the lake in that particular area can't more than a hundred feet deep.

It's just deep enough to be out of the question for someone who can't swim, but just shallow enough to taunt her. The knowledge of her lightsaber being somewhere under there – so close, yet so far - is irritating, to say the least. 

The kyber crystal in the Skywalker saber is still split in two, unanswering on a good day – so she figures she has a better chance of calling forth her own; the one she’d spent a month’s worth of sleepless nights assembling and reassembling until she got it _just right_ ; the one that calls to her in a way that no weapon – not even the beloved quarterstaff sitting in her quarters back on Svivren – ever has.

The one that’s totally, irrevocably _hers_.

She might be without a ship or a means to communicate with the Resistance, but she’ll be damned if she’s without some sort of weapon.

Predictably, when she tries to reach out into the lake. she can’t feel her lightsaber at all. Unlike land, the lake seems to be bereft of the Force entirely.

Of course, right as the sense of dejection begins to hit her, Kylo fucking Ren has to come over and make it worse.

“That won’t work,” he says from somewhere on her right. “There are far too many of them in and around the lake to allow you to feel for anything through them.”

“No _shit_ –”

“ _And_ ,” he continues, just a little forcefully, “there are far too many of them in and around the lake to allow you to feel for anything through them. They retreat into the water at night, but they don’t seem to venture too far from the shore during the day, either. Barring the one that snuck up on us this morning.”

Kylo’s voice is laced with a detached, almost _academic_ tone, which Rey has a difficult time comprehending in the wake of… well, _everything_. “It seems their Force-suppression abilities are stronger when they’re clustered together, surpassing the field of nullification that an individual–”

“Ten feet.”

“What?”

“The nullification bubble you’re talking about,” she supplies. “The area around them where you can’t feel the Force. It’s about ten feet in radius. I felt it when you were asleep.”

Kylo nods to himself, and she’s marginally surprised that he’s not trying to argue with her assessment.

“The field they affect is smaller but, overall, their Force-nullifying abilities are uncannily similar to the ysalamir. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.”

Rey can’t help herself. “The ys-a- _what_?”

“Ysalamir,” he repeats, unperturbed. “A reptile from Myrkr. I’ve come across them once before, when I was—”

He cuts himself off, mouth snapping shut like he’s just said something unforgivable.

_Ah_. “When you were with Luke, training to be a Jedi”

She doesn’t expect a confirmation, and she doesn’t get one. Kylo just keeps talking about the lizards, like he didn’t hear her at all.

“There isn’t any record of ysalamiri in this part of the galaxy, but I know they were brought on some interplanetary missions during the Empire, and a number of planets around the Drynn system were ceded to sentients who experimented with ways to exploit and suppress the Force. It’s very possible that they were brought here as an invasive species and evolved into something slightly different as the environment necessitated it, losing their fur and developing the ability to swim.”

Rey continues staring out at the lake and hopes her face doesn’t betray her curiosity, how she’s hanging on every piece of information _(furry lizards?!)_ that’s being doled out to her. “Thank you for the information but, if you don’t mind, I’d like to verify all of that for myself.”

Her words are polite enough, but she makes sure that her tone cuts like glass.

When he doesn’t make to move away, she finally gives in and turns to face him, squinting against the sun. She has to tilt her head back at an obscenely sharp angle just to make eye contact with him, and she prays the maneuver isn’t cutting off blood flow to the brain. He’s too tall. No human man should be this tall.

“I’m serious, Kylo. Kriff off.”

He doesn’t.

Instead, he sinks to a crouch, elbows on his knees. “You don’t trust me.”

“Not as far as I could throw you,” Rey answers, not one to sugarcoat the truth with anyone – _particularly_ not with him. She stares at him flatly, hoping her expression conveys the deep desire she feels for the prospect of him fucking all the way off.

Unfortunately Kylo’s reading comprehension skills are abysmal as far as her facial expressions are concerned. He stays crouched, and keeps talking.

“You’re calling me Kylo.”

Rey’s eyebrows twitch without her permission.

It’s not that she’d thought he wouldn’t notice. She’d just foolishly assumed he wouldn’t bring it up.

“Force of habit,” she says, careful to keep her tone flat. “What with you being the biggest thorn in the Resistance’s side and all.”

It’s believable enough as far as explanations go, and it’s not _entirely_ a lie.

Consumed with the need to turn the tables on him, Rey pastes a saccharine smile on her face, asks, “Would it bother you more if I called you Ben?”

He stands without flourish and stares down at her, jaw working. It looks almost like he’s trying to figure her out; like he’s trying to read her face to deduce the correct answer.

He finally settles on a terse, “No.”

Rey hums in a manner she hopes comes across as noncommittal, and it takes exactly one second for Kylo to turn on his heel. The move is so sharp that he very nearly whacks her with his cape.

After he’s clomped off to Force-knows-where, she is left alone with only her thoughts and metric boatload of lizards to accompany her.

*****

A few weeks after the battle on Crait, before the wound of his betrayal had festered into something resentful and ugly, Rey referred to him as “Ben” in Leia’s makeshift office aboard the Falcon. It had been a reflex, likely born out of replaying those fateful moments on the _Supremacy_ over and over again in her head, trying to make sense of how it fit with the softer memories; trying to figure out where he, or she – or both of them, maybe – had gone so wrong that they ended up right back where they started.

When she blurted the name out – unthinkingly, easy as breathing, because she felt safe, because they were some of the only people left in the galaxy who knew the _real_ identity of the man behind the mask – a few things happened at the same time: Poe’s fist clenched at his side, Finn’s expression fell into something frighteningly close to betrayal, and Chewie let out a quiet, mournful little warble.

Worst of all, though, Rey had to watch as Leia’s eyes softened sadly, regretfully; in much the same way that Rey’s sure her own eyes do whenever she’s asked about her family.

In that moment, Rey resolved that he couldn’t _be_ “Ben” to her, not anymore – not if she wanted to have a chance at being the beacon of light the Resistance needed her to be.

Not if she wanted to forget the hurt. Not if she wanted to let the people around her do the same for themselves.

Kylo likes to say that Ben Solo is dead, and Rey used to think that that mentality was pure bantha shit, not from concentrate.

Now, though, she thinks she might understand, just a little.

A sympathetic ear and soft reassurances in one of her darkest, loneliest moments. A hand touching hers in the firelight. In _those_ memories, he is _Ben_. Right after Crait, she wasn’t – she still _isn’t_ –ready to sacrifice the remembrance of those precious moments to the fire of regret and resentment. Not yet.

So, she forged a schism so vast, so _deep,_ that it’d make the canyons on this godsforsaken planet weep. She drew the line between Ben Solo and Kylo Ren, allowing herself to cherish the very real memories of the man she was willing to beat up Luke Skywalker and throw herself into an escape pod for while, at the same time, accepting the man for the wrathful, vengeful _monster_ she never should have forgotten he is.

Every time she so much as thinks about calling him Ben, now, she reminds herself of that _look_ on Leia’s face. It was the memory of that look that convinced Rey to return to Ahch-To to collect Luke’s X-wing – to give the general something, _anything_ , that might provide some of the closure and comfort the older woman is too stubbornly selfless to admit she needs.

Rey thinks of that _look_ on Leia’s face as she sits on the familiar ledge, looking to the pink-blue sky and gently running her thumb along the edge of the sharp stone she’d found on her walk back.

It’s just her luck that she’d set off to collect one relic from Leia’s past only to end up stuck with another.

Rey shakes her head, hoping to shake all thoughts of Ben Solo out with it. Keeping the sharp stone in her other hand, she reaches for the long branch she found last night and begins to whittle one of the ends into a sharp point.

*****

It’s entirely possible that the universe heard Rey wish for a moratorium on thoughts of Ben Solo. As such, it’s _also_ entirely possible that the universe swiftly laughed at said wish and threw it back in her face, because she runs into Not-Ben, Definitely-Kylo as she makes her way to the far side of the lake.

He seems to be meditating, and she tries to slip past him unnoticed. For the first time, she curses the Forceless lizards for _not_ being around her.

“Did you… make a spear?”

Rey curses under her breath and stops walking, turning to him. He’s still sitting with his legs crossed, but his eyes are open and… confused.

She waves the offending object in the air impatiently, hoping it’s answer enough for him.

It isn’t.

“Are you going to… kill something? And eat it?”

Rey snorts. “You’re acting like you’ve never had to hunt your own food before.”

His face does a _thing_. He doesn’t respond.

“Kylo Ren, please don’t tell me you’ve never had to hunt your own food before.”

Another non-answer is confirmation enough, and Rey scoffs, relishing in the novelty of feeling superior to the so-called “Supreme” Leader as turns to continue her journey.

“I wouldn’t eat one of those if I were you,” Ben says, sounding _just_ on the wrong side of smug.

The temptation to ignore Kylo’s protests is strong – especially considering the fact that he’s never had to track and kill his next meal – but her better instinct wins out and she stops walking, turning her head around to him.

“And why not?”

Kylo levels her with a look that she imagines parents must give their particularly dull children. “I’d say there’s a ninety-five percent chance their Force-nullifying ability is dependent on their being alive and that eating them won’t do anything.

He raises an eyebrow. “But in this particular situation, I won’t be risking that remaining five percent.”

Stars, Rey wishes she’d _ever_ had the luxury to be that paranoid about the source of her next meal.

“What do you suggest I eat instead, then? Hm?” She crosses her arms. “A rock? A twig? A condescending asshole who happens to be right in front of me and getting on my nerves?”

She thinks it’s pretty clear that there is no intention behind her words; that, like many things she does around him, her words are simply meant to goad him, to keep him on his toes and off of her fragile defenses. She has absolutely no intention of taking _any_ of his feedback into account, solely on principle.

Even so, it’s funny to watch him latch onto that grotesque hypothetical with the morbid fascination of a person who probably spent a lot of time.

“You wouldn’t eat me,” he says matter-of-factly.

Rey raises her chin, hoping the defiance oozes out of her expression. “Maybe I would. Raised by ripper-raptors and all.”

“I believe I said _happabores_.”

“Yes, but happabores are herbivores, so they wouldn’t eat you anyways. I’m sure the ripper-raptors, on the other hand, would,” Rey says, thoroughly enjoying the feeling of having the upper hand, even in this silly, disgusting line of conversation. “They love the taste of hatred, warlording, and betrayal.”

Kylo’s looking her dead in the eyes when he snipes back, “I don’t know about that. I hear patricide leaves a gamey aftertaste.”

Rey’s mouth opens and closes, a little dumbstruck for a reason she isn’t able to parse until after she’s walked away in swift dismissal, until his words have rattled around in her head all the way down to the shoreline.

It only hits her when she’s standing inside the Forceless bubble, and the realization makes her breath catch in her throat for a long second: that was the first time Kylo has referred to Han Solo as his father on his own accord; even in a roundabout way, even in the form of a dumb and distinctly distasteful ( _ha_ ) joke.

She can’t sense what he’s feeling from where she stands within the Forceless bubble, but she doesn’t think she’s imagining the way his shoulders hunch just a little closer to his ears.

*****

Don’t get Rey wrong: there is nothing particularly _good_ about being stranded on a desert planet with Kylo Ren.

That doesn’t mean, however, that she doesn’t positively _delight_ in the aforementioned man’s reaction when she interrupts his meditation by dropping her spear at his feet, three very unlucky lizards skewered on the end.

*****

“You didn’t ask to borrow my lightsaber.”

“What, so I could burn a gaping _hole_ through the center of our food?”

“Touché.”

They’re sitting on the ledge by the fire, not entirely familiar with the length of a full day cycle on this planet and not willing to risk getting caught in the thick darkness that had fallen so abruptly last night.

Rey accredits the hesitant ceasefire they’re currently experiencing on their full bellies, Kylo having given into the whole “ _eating the Force-stopping lizards_ ” thing pretty quickly once he watched her eat one without any immediate adverse effects.

After a moment of thoughtful silence, Kylo continues to press the lightsaber issue his mind seems to be stuck on.

“It’s just interesting to me. How comfortable you are fashioning your own weapons.”

She levels him with a scathing look, but can’t muster the energy to put any real heat behind it. “I grew up _alone_. On _Jakku_.”

She shrugs, adding, “I’m used to it. Even now, sometimes, it’s easier than whipping out a bright laser sword and making everyone nervous.”

He gives her a funny little look, but it clears just as quickly as it’d emerged.

“Ah, right,” Kylo says, almost to himself. “The weapons ban on Svivren.”

She’s on him the instant the planet’s name leaves his lips. He’s on his feet the moment she is, but the element of surprise still enables her to force his back against the narrow area of cliff face between the mouth of the cave and the side of the ledge.

She could pitch him over the side, if she really wants to.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

She grips the small spear with a white-knucked grip, moving it towards him with the intention of pressing it against his throat. The lizard blood on it hasn’t dried yet. Kylo is able to use the Force to ensure that she can’t move the bloodied spear any closer to his neck than it already is, holding a palm up an almost lackadaisical fashion. Like he barely even cares enough to put the effort in.

He ignores her question, tilting his head at her with a sense of detached curiosity.

“I wonder,” he muses, a little cold. “Do the Svivreni classify _you_ as a weapon?”

For the first time since they crashed here, Rey feels him to press into her mind, searching for the answer he knows she won’t give with single-minded intention.

Rey shoves his consciousness out of hers with just as much callousness. She’s almost entirely sure he can feel her shaking, now, if not see it plainly. “How do you know the location?”

“Are you honestly surprised?” he drawls, a glimmer of mirth in his eyes. It infuriates her.

“ _Answer_ me, Kylo,” she practically growls the words, through her teeth. “”

He . “Your point of origin was on the ship’s nav computer, Rey. I saw it when I redirected the rustbucket’s course to the atmosphere of the nearest planet.”

It’s one of the first pieces of information he’s deigned to give her about his involvement in the crash. In any other situation, she’d be pressing further into this possible opening, trying to extract more from him.

But, at the moment, all she can think about is the fate of the friends she's left behind; the friends whose location she unknowingly betrayed; the friends whose trust she feels swiftly and wholly undeserving of.

The Resistance has been on Svivren for eight months now, settled deep into the mountains and comfortable in a way that Rey knows the most dedicated members haven’t felt in years – a miracle, especially considering the planet’s merciless weather patterns and extreme environment.

It will take at least – at least – two days to retrieve their ships from where they are scattered along the mountainscape without raising alarms among Svivren security. It will probably take an additional day to remove any trace of their extended stay, as per Leia’s under-the-table deal with the Svivreni government, which is intent on maintaining the appearance of neutrality.

It’s weakness, she thinks, that makes her eyes widen and search his, imploring. It’s desperation, she thinks, that makes her ask, “What will it take for you to give them three days’ head start? To call them off and let me warn them first?”

Kylo abruptly lets go of his invisible hold on the spear. She doesn’t even try to move the weapon closer, to try and make him feel a fraction of the red-hot anger he makes her feel. She makes a mental note to chastise herself for it, later.

“Oh, I almost forgot, thank you. Hold on,” Kylo says, closing his eyes and pressing two of his fingers to his temple.

Rey is downright stupefied. Gobsmacked, even. “What’s that? What are you doing?”

Kylo cracks an eye open. “Overriding the First Order’s comms system and informing them of the Resistance’s current location.”

Rey’s jaw drops despite herself. “You can _do_ that?! Through the Force?!”

If _he_ can use the Force to do that, then surely she can do the same with the Resistance and–

“ _No_. Obviously not,” Kylo rolls his eyes, rolling his eyes. He kicks off the wall and shoulders past Rey with relative ease, getting himself back to the relative safety of the ledge’s center before he turns back to her. “The First Order don’t know a thing, yet, and they won’t until rescue comes for me. In all likelihood, First Order officers will take you in for questioning themselves once they track us here, and there will be no time for any advanced warning.

“And,” he continues, “on the very miniscule chance that you’re right, and the Resistance _does_ somehow manage to out-maneuver the First Order and get here first, you’ll have nothing to worry about anyways.”

He pauses, looks back at her.

“Did you honestly believe I could use the Force to broadcast my thoughts _into_ a comms system?”

“I–” Rey shuffles, just a little. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

To her great surprise, Kylo doesn’t mock her further. He just shakes his head a little as he continues into the alcove, presumably to lay out his stupid little cape bed again.

It doesn’t qualify as a truce, but it’s… _something_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone with actual wilderness survival skills: I'm sorry for the... all of it. I spent every middle school camping excursion pretending I was in the Hunger Games. I absorbed nothing.
> 
> silly little notes:
> 
> 1\. As far as capes are concerned, Rey is basically Edna Mode here
> 
> 2\. “Bumper speeders” was originally just a filler until I thought of another comparison, but THEN I became attached to the idea of floaty bumper cars.  
> (My hc in this little ‘verse: when the gang went off-world on a mission once, Rose and Poe insisted on taking Rey and Finn because neither of them had ever heard of it before. It was supposed to be fun but Rey took the "bumping" aspect of it part of it way too far and now every bumper speeder venue in the Core has a BOLO for her.)  
> (Poe flipped two and a half tables on the way out, “in _solidarity_ , Rey”) (Finn and Rose pretended not to know either of them.)


	3. the yielding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> L i s t e n... I'm sorry. Life has been a hot mess express. (Read: _I've_ been a hot mess express, mostly.) But we're BACK, baby.
> 
> Thank you so, so much to everyone who's commented, left kudos, and/or given this a read so far <3 It genuinely makes me so happy (and confused, but in a happy way). I'm still not convinced that the current hit count isn't the result of my mother finding this and hitting "refresh" 1,012 times.
> 
> Note the change to the chapter count! :) These two st*pidheads won't shut up and it was fucking with the pacing.
> 
> Content warning for a touch of gore in this one. (Spoilery description in the end notes.)

Part III

_ "the yielding” _

The first thing Rey notices about her dream is – _well_ , it’s that she’s noticing anything at _all_ , really. That she's a conscious operator in a space typically reserved for her unconscious mind.

The second thing she notices is that it is, in part, a memory – familiar to both her dream body and the mostly-conscious mind that’s piloting it.

She’s walking along the corridor of a familiar ship, a little unsteadily as the Falcon shifts into its landing sequence. There’s a hand on her back, ushering her along until they reach a supply closet, hidden behind a false panel that was installed right before this moment; _for_ this moment.

_“I’m sorry, Rey. It was their only condition, and we would_ never _leave you behind, but the Svivreni can’t know–”_

_“It’s okay. Really_. _I’m just grateful the Resistance still wanted to keep me around.”_

A gentle hand reaches up to rest upon her shoulder.

_“Of course we do.”_ A sigh. _“I know this is a painful sacrifice, but it’s necessary. And it won’t be like this forever.”_

It would, though, over the months. In small but significant ways. 

But _this_ version of her doesn’t know that yet.

_“I understand.”_ She did, then. And she does, now. _“Besides, this is nothing. I’ve been in far worse places for far longer.”_

Rey’s thinking about Jakku, in the dream, in the memory.

She’s thinking about the damned desert planet, now.

(A teeny part of her, somewhere in her conscious mind, knows that this level of self-awareness in a dream isn’t normal, that this should be a red flag.)

(That teeny, logical part of her decidedly _doesn’t_ follow her into the supply closet.)

Then, a warm hug. 

Brown eyes filled with something too distant, too quietly mournful to be pity. 

A door closing. 

It’s there, in the darkness, that dream shifts into something markedly different. It’s one of those fuzzy, fluid things, with no discernible plot or origin point – just fleeting moments and burning impressions.

_This_ bit is very much _not_ a memory.

Something – no, some _one_ – sidles up behind her, creating a veritable _wall_ of heat right up against her back. Instantly, she knows whose likeness her subconscious decided to draw up. 

And, really, who else would it – _could_ it – be? 

Rey would never admit it – not even with a blaster to her head – but what immediately follows isn’t _wholly_ awful, as far as dreams are concerned, and Rey is a little upset at the twinge of compunction that her conscious mind has dragged into the dream world with it. 

The faintest touch of leather against her neck, as _his_ hand brushes her hair over her shoulder, out of the way.

Hot breath behind her ear. 

An arm wrapping around her middle, holding her closer.

Teeth ( _teeth?!_ ) grazing the shell of her ear.

Lips grazing right where the breath left off, moving down to her neck in a painfully slow and feather-light journey along the tendon there.

Her hand, reaching back to tangle in thick black hair. 

(Because she _knows_ what color this hair is, because she knows who _he_ is, in this dream.)

An almost pained-sounding groan, right against her neck.

A lizard.

Rey’s brows furrow as her dream-eyes adjust to the darkness, looking at the ugly little creature on the floor in front of her. It’s just… there. Reminding her of the very real waking world she’s trying _very hard_ to forget about right now. 

She curses herself for intruding on her own dreamscape and spewing _self-awareness_ all over it.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she tells the lizard, rather uselessly.

A beady little quintet of eyes blink at her. 

Then, it says, “Rey.”

Rey blinks. “I beg your pardon?”

“Wake _up_.” The words sound a little imploring. 

“Don’t tell me what to do _,”_ she snaps at it, annoyed. 

The voice doesn’t answer back, and she’s just about to ignore it entirely. It's _her_ dream, after all. She has the _right_.

“ _Rey_.” 

She realizes, then, that the sound isn’t coming from the lizard at all. And it’s definitely not _him_ , behind her, because _he_ ’s still doing that _thing_ with her neck, and the hand holding the side of her ribcage starts traveling up, _up–_

“ _REY!”_ the voice barks, urgent and harsh. and that voice, in that _tone,_ tugs at something familiar in the back of her mind. 

Just as she places it, she’s yanked out of the dream.

*****

Rey wakes with a start, very disoriented and _unreasonably_ warm, particularly considering the fact that the fire was put out before she fell asleep.

_“The lizards,”_ was the only explanation Kylo gave as he doused lakewater over the flames. 

And it’s that thought, of those words and that man combined, that brings the dream back to her. More specifically, it reminds her of the oddly abrupt way the dream _ended._ And the oddly abrupt way she woke up.

Her train of thought screeches to a halt when it’s interrupted by an _extremely_ pointed cough from the other side of the cave.

Rey opens her eyes.

Oh gods.

“Oh _gods.”_

Did he see–?

“Yes.”

The warmth she was feeling shifts into a shocked, _shamed_ heat, burning across her cheeks. “Why were you _watching_ my dream?!”

“I wasn’t _trying_ to,” he defends, like it _helps_. “Your thoughts were… very loud.”

“Then _ignore_ them!” Rey bits back into the air above them, _loudly_ , face burning.

“You should be thankful I didn’t let it keep–”

“ _Got it!_ ” Rey speaks over him, squeezing her eyes shut.

She can’t even _look_ at him. She can’t look _anywhere._

She wants to get sucked up into kriffing _space_. 

Her first instinct tells her to run, but she tamps it down before she can so much as lift a finger. If he found her in Wild Space, he’d _certainly_ be able to find her on this stupid rock. And even though she yanked her mental walls up the moment, it seems to be aggravated, maybe even _encouraged_ , by their physical proximity. It’d only be a matter of time before he found her again, and then she’d be forced to look at his _ridiculous_ face and know that he saw her _ridiculous_ dream drawn up by her own _ridiculous_ subconscious.

Suddenly, this desert planet doesn’t feel big enough for the two of them.

“The part with m– the general,” he stutters over that, just a little, “I assume that was a memory?”

“You know I’m not gonna answer that,” Rey says, eyes still firmly shut. If the embarrassment about the _other_ part of her dream wasn’t enough, now he’s obtained little pieces of information about the Resistance, and the beginning of their stay on Svivren. 

Now this little subconscious peep show a kriffing _security risk_.

He’s quiet for a minute, and she thinks that maybe, hopefully, he might have fallen asleep.

“The voyeuristic lizard was an interesting touch.”

And _that_ – that’s _it_.

Rey opens her eyes, staring straight up at the cave ceiling overhead. “We need to be connected through the Force for… for _that_ to happen again, correct?”

A brief, uncomfortable beat of silence. “Are you planning on having that dream... again?”

" _Answer the kriffing question.”_

Another excruciatingly long second passes. “Theoretically, yes.”

“Perfect,” Rey says, standing up and dusting her pants off. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices his head turn in her direction, watching her walk away.

“Where are you–” Kylo sits up, words cutting off the moment he sees her start to climb down from the ledge. “You can’t be serious.”

“I can, and I am,” Rey says, halting in her climb to dare a look at his face.

He looks a little stressed, and she’d find it funny if she wasn’t so kriffing _frazzled._

“I’m _not_ sleeping next to a Force-suppressing lizard,” he says. The moment Rey opens her mouth to refute that statement, he adds, “Not on purpose.”

“And _I’m_ not sleeping next to someone who can’t stop themselves from rifling through my brain. I’m getting a damn lizard, and you’re going to suck it up.”

When she’s a few feet down, her common sense kicks in. They haven’t wandered around this place in the middle of the night before, and she’ll be damned if she kicks the bucket trying to fetch a Force-suppressing lizard to keep Kylo Ren out of her head.

Rey reaches up with one hand, the heel of her palm just clearing the top of the ledge, and tries to summon his saber like she has before. 

She senses an object hurtling _at_ her – not _to_ her – instead, and with her senses already extended, she catches it with ease.

It’s her dinky little spear.

“Fuck you, too, then,” she grumbles, tucking it into her waistband before she continues climbing down.

He might mutter something in response, but she blocks it out for her own sanity.

*****

It’s actually kind of nice on this planet at night, Rey thinks as she struts down to the lake. There’s a soft breeze drifting across the glass-still lake, the unusual darkness almost allows her to imagine she’s somewhere else, and best of all, there are no Kylo Rens in the vicinity to receive broadcasts of her privatemost thoughts. 

Rey’s eyes adjust to the near-oppressive dark with relative ease once she makes it down to the shoreline which, notably, is completely bare, barring a few scraps of gnarled metal that the water seems to have spat back up and lulled to shore. All the lizards seem to have retreated back into the water, just as they did last night, but Rey still can’t feel the Force once she gets within a couple feet of the water.

She steps into the water, hoping she doesn’t have to do a walk of lizard-less shame back to the ledge. When she’s about ankle-deep, her foot bumps into something. Looking down, she sees a few lizards huddled together, stirred by her movement and beginning to scatter.

“Sorry!” she says, not sure if she’s apologizing for nearly stepping on them or for the way she’s currently reaching into the water, grabbing the nearest one. It thrashes in her hands while its comrades flee the scene.

She tucks the flailing creature tightly against her chest, mentally cataloguing where she’s standing so she can return it to the same spot in the morning. 

Just as she’s about to pivot and turn to shore, it stops squirming and lets out an ear-splitting shriek _._ It’s a sound Rey wasn’t even aware these things were _capable_ of making, and she barely has time to think about it before the lizard is slithering out of her grasp with unusual force and scampering away through the water.

“No, no, _no!_ ” Rey cries, toddling after the little escapee in the ankle-deep water. “Don’t do this to me! Don’t leave me alone with him!”

Idly, she thinks her friends would get a kick out of this. As she tries and fails to catch the speedy little lizard, she imagines the Falcon landing on the shore right now, her friends piling out and commiserating with her plight.

By the time the water’s up to her calves, Rey resigns herself to having lost that particular reptile – it put up too good of a fight to be subjected to a night next to Kylo Ren, anyways; it’s earned its freedom. 

She turns to find another one but, before she can move further, something brushes up against her exposed ankle under the water.

At first, she thinks that the little escape artist lizard has come back to accept its solemn duty. When she looks down, she sees a long, unfamiliar shadow, and her stomach drops all the way down into the core of the planet.

“Oh, _kriff_ ,” she eloquently remarks. 

Knowing she _definitely_ doesn’t have the advantage here, and almost entirely certain she’ll be safe as soon as she gets to land, Rey is instantly leaning toward flight over fight, trying to get shallower water and simultaneously pulling the spear from her waistband. She’s barely moved two feet before she chances a look down only to see the long, serpentine shape wrapping around her right leg. 

In theory, the spear was an excellent idea. In practice, not so much. The instant she pierces the surface of the water, the creature latches onto it, and she catches a glimpse of its serpentiney-fishy head – about as big her _own_ head, what the _fuck_ – with its huge jaw and rows upon rows of tiny, _sharp_ teeth, before it chomps down and pulls the spear out of her hands, down into the water with it. 

Leaving her without a weapon and, being where she is, without the Force. 

Seeing the opportunity for what it is, Rey tries to hop over the serpentine shape, trying her best to get to shore before the… _thing_ notices that it’s just grabbed an overgrown stick.

She stumbles along on the uneven, submerged rocks, managing to get mere _foot_ away from the edge of the water before she slips, or maybe she’s tripped, or–, or– _something_. All she knows is that she lands on her hands and knees right before she feels a pressure on her left foot. Then, with a far-too-strong tug, she’s pulled down to her stomach. 

Somewhat ridiculously, Rey’s first thought is: _Oh gods. Not_ again _._

She doesn’t have to look back – doesn’t have _time_ to – to know that the thing is biting down on her boot. She thinks fast, trying (failing) to pull herself further to the shore on her elbows while, at the same time, attempting to use her right foot to push her left boot off. 

It would probably buy her enough time to scurry away, and she figures there are far worse fates than going barefoot until rescue arrives.

Unfortunately, Rey is exceptionally good at tying her shoes, and that makes it nearly impossible.

_New plan, then,_ she thinks, twisting around. 

On the bright side, she ends up on her back, just like she wanted. 

On the not-so-bright side, her plan to untie her boot is shot to hell, because the serpentine creature adjusts its grip when she flips around, clamping down just _above_ her boot, biting into the flesh.

She thinks she wails, then. Thinks she can hear the sound of her pain above the blood rushing in her ears.

Acting on pure fighting instinct now – at a loss, in a panic, at the end of her rope – she uses her free foot to kick the absolute _shit_ out of the serpent’s head. It doesn’t let go, but it stops trying to pull her, even just for a moment.

The brief reprieve – if one could even call it that, being that she’s still nailing the creature in the face with her heel – doesn’t last long.

A few things happen, then, in rapid succession:

First, a strange red glow appears in her periphery, and she turns her head amidst her thrashing and kicking. There’s a person– _Kylo_ , she realizes – hauling absolute _ass_ toward the lake, toward her, lightsaber activated and swishing unevenly through the air as he sprints.

Then, as if in reaction, the thing attached to her ankle pivots and _yanks,_ redirecting its course to start dragging her into the water. A particularly sharp rock digs into her back as she’s dragged along. She _definitely_ wails, this time.

The _instant_ that _that_ happens, Kylo Ren – who’s been under the tutelage of two of the galaxy’s most powerful Force users, both in the Dark and the Light, who’s in possession of a brain capable of at least _semi-_ intelligent thought – does something so incredibly _stupid_ that Rey can hardly believe her eyes. 

It might be the most asinine thing she’s ever seen him do. 

(And that’s a _high_ bar.)

He must realize he has _seconds_ before she’s pulled completely under and, unable to get to her in time from where _he_ is, fifty or so feet away, and unable to use the Force to help her from where _she_ is, Kylo settles for what she _presumes_ he thinks is the next-best thing.

He throws – fucking _hurls_ – his activated lightsaber in her direction. It’s sending it sailing through the air, red cross-guard and all, _directly at her._ At a loss, in a panic, at the end of her rope, 

For the two seconds the saber is flipping through the air, crackling crossguard and all, Rey has… no idea what she’s supposed to do. Without the Force to help guide her movements, to usher the saber into her hand, she can’t catch it. At least, not without severing it entirely, which wouldn’t help _anybody._

Clearly sensing something amiss, the creature starts to pull even _harder,_ and Rey squeezes her eyes shut, taking a deep breath and getting ready for her head to be submerged–

–but, instead, the pulling stops, right as she hears the telltale sizzle of laser meeting flesh.

She opens her eyes immediately, just in time to see the saber’s blade retracting a few feet away from her as it hits the rocks under the water, under the newly-beheaded fishy serpent creature’s body.

Rey turns her head toward Kylo, who’s still coming toward the shore but is now sauntering rather than sprinting. 

He speaks the moment she lays eyes on him. “You’re zero for two now, scavenger.”

His cocky tone cuts right through Rey, and a torrent of sharp, messy emotion rises up within her, wrapping around her throat with the subtlety of a vise. 

“What the _fuck_ was _that?!”_ she rasps, hands shaking from shock, or rage, or both.

He comes to a stop just out of the Forceless field’s reach, squinting at the creature’s long, bobbing corpse. “It looks like an aquatic serpent. Or a very large eel.”

Of course he thinks she’s talking about the creature he just killed. Of _course_ he’s not thinking about how he killed it by chucking his _ignited lightsaber_ into an area where neither of them could use the Force to guide or manipulate _anything_.

Kriff, based on how quickly she was getting dragged, and how far up the incision landed on the creature’s body, Rey thinks she was probably _milliseconds_ away from getting her whole _foot_ chopped off.

“I meant _you!_ You could have _killed_ me!” Rey screeches, body still half-submerged and heart still pounding in her chest from the lingering fear, sustained by the anger bubbling in her stomach. 

Kylo is sauntering instead of sprinting, now, coming to a stop just out of the Forceless field’s reach. He looks a little frenzied, for whatever reason, but still manages to raise a condescending eyebrow at her. “It worked, did it not?”

It did. And that’s Rey’s _problem_. 

“E CHU _TA!_ ” Rey yells back, even though the most offensive words in the known galaxy don’t seem strong enough to capture what she’s feeling right now. When the release of the curse doesn’t alleviate her frustration, she leans over to grab his saber from where it’s submerged next to – _kriffing hell, that’s disgusting_ – the creature’s severed head. 

She doesn’t waste so much as a breath between grabbing his deactivated lightsaber and rising to her knees, chucking it at him from where she’s sitting, not caring how the movement feels like it tears something on her back, across her right shoulder blade.

Impossibly, _infuriatingly_ , he snatches it out of the air with a deft hand. “Watch your mouth.”

“What kind of laser-brained stunt was that?!” Rey fumes, chest heaving, still kneeling as the water laps against her thighs. “What were you thinking?!”

The questions are mostly rhetorical; she doesn’t think he was thinking much of anything, when he pulled that.

Predictably, Kylo provides absolutely no insight into his thoughts. “You’re upset at me. For helping you.”

Rey’s pretty sure he doesn’t need her confirmation on that one. “What _is_ it with you and your… your karking _savior_ complex?”

He frowns, and she can see him make a face when he gets close enough to the water for the Force to leave his awareness, then proceeds to enter the water until he’s standing right next to her, right in the middle of the serpent’s… pieces.

“You’re welcome. _Again_.” The scowl on Kylo’s face runs discordant with the way he extends an arm out to her, clearly trying to help her to her feet. 

The mere sight of his outstretched hand drags that unwelcome memory back up from where she’s done her damndest to push it down. She gets up on her own, trying to ignore the pain in her left ankle as she puts her weight on it. The creature’s teeth weren’t long, but their sharpness surely compensated for that. Even under the water, she can see that her ankle is practically perforated with angry red teeth marks, wrapping around like a ring.

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine,” she spits.

She knows he sees the gash the rocks left across her back the moment she starts walking (limping, really) away, back toward the relative safety of the ledge. She can feel the tiny trickles of blood running down her back, distinct from the droplets of water.

Whatever Kylo’s undoubtedly about to say, Rey doesn’t want to hear it. “I’m _fine_ ,” she repeats, harsh and leaving no room for argument. And in the recesses of her mind, she does feel just a little bit guilty about it. Logically, she knows she should be showing a little bit of gratitude towards the man who has just helped her out of a life-threatening situation for the _second_ time in the span of as many days. And yet… and _yet_ … 

Rey’s spent most of her life keeping _herself_ alive – and she’s done a damn good job at it. But, now, the _one_ person she wants to keep out of her head has seen her at her most vulnerable. 

( _Physically_ , her tratourious brain supplies, reminding her of tears of sadness, tears of hope and, after _that_ , tears of betrayal.) 

Rey is _embarrassed_ , is what she is.

And admitting to that embarrassment, even in the walled-up confines of her own mind at the moment, amplifies it. It somehow manages to make the shame fold over on itself, compounding the feeling until it pressurizes and has no choice but to burst out of her at the next available opportunity.

The opportunity comes just as she places her hands on the cliff face and begins to scale up to the ledge, holding back a hiss every time she has to put weight on her left foot or pull herself up with her right arm.

Kylo is standing right below her, probably enjoying the sight of her struggling to get up the kriffing cliff. “You should heal yourself before doing that.”

Rey bristles, twisting the upper half of her body around long enough to glare, _meaningfully,_ at him. The move pulls at the wound on her back. “Would it kill you to leave me alone?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Kylo says. Then, like the arrogant _ass_ that he is, he smirks. “Though, it looks like being left alone might kill _you_.”

If Rey’s blood was at a light simmer before, the pointed look he directs at her left ankle foot, now about eye-level with his stupid face, is enough to bring it to a boil.

She whips back around and continues her stilted ascent, entire body tense with the effort of restraining herself from reacting in a way that might aggravate any of her injuries, like jumping down from where she is, about ten feet up now, and giving him a piece of her mind face-to-face. Or, potentially, flinging herself off the wall and dropping onto him, elbow-first. Or… well, doing anything else equally as stupid, really. 

(Though admittedly – as she knows from those scrums back on Jakku – _very_ satisfying.)

“You know, Kylo,” Rey seethes at the cliff face instead. “When something tries to kill _you_ next, don’t you dare expect me to return the favor.”

There’s absolutely no mistaking why he chooses the particular words he says next. 

“I wouldn’t _dream_ of it,” he drawls.

Rey can only imagine the stupidly smug expression he must be wearing, and the mere _concept_ of it is enough to shatter her brief, lofty desire to take the high ground. 

(Proverbially, of course, as she is already quite literally at a higher altitude.)

Rey closes her eyes for the briefest of moments, flitting her awareness to the rock protrusions in her immediate vicinity, searching for the weakest point. She finds it within the span of a second, directly under the foot that _hasn’t_ recently been between the jaws of an awful lake creature.

On her next heave upward, Rey grasps her handholds a little tighter, bracing herself, before unleashing a deft downward kick to dislodge the chunk of rock, which just so happens to be right above Kylo.

She’s sacrificed a good foot hold, for sure, but it’s a little worth it for the mutter of “ _dank_ fucking _ferrick, Rey_ ” she hears from below as he presumably (tragically) dodges it.

*****

Rey not stupid enough to put open wounds on bare rock, and she swipes his cape off the floor before laying it out on her side of the cave. 

As she lays down, Rey allows herself a brief moment of concern for how she’s thinking of this side of the cave as _“hers”_ ; for how terribly familiar this place is starting to become.

Kylo, having since Force-jumped or frog-hopped or otherwise cheated his way up to the ledge, announces his presence with a disgruntled sigh.

“You’re bleeding on my cloak.”

Releasing an unholy sigh, Rey rolls her eyes, bringing herself to a seated position. She fights against the urge to bring her legs close or cross them under herself, careful not to jostle her injured ankle. “Seriously?”

“Why don’t you just heal yourself?”

“Why don’t _you_ just _heal_ the blood stains out of your _cloak_?”

Rey’s obstinate refusal to answer his question does not go unnoticed, judging from the look on his face. 

Biting back at him is just easier, safer, than having a real conversation with him nowadays. Particularly when the conversation will inevitably lead to her admitting to… well, _that_.

It’s a rare ability, yes, but Rey knows she’s more than capable of it. She just... can’t. At least, not _correctly_.

Rey does have the Jedi texts – on Svivren, obviously, not _here_ – so, at face value, she should probably be able to do a great many things with the Force. But, the thing is, those texts are karking _ancient_. And so are the languages most of them are written in.

Life on Jakku did a great many things for Rey. But equip her with the ability to decipher archaic logographic scripts, it did not. And while her instincts have seldomly led her astray as far as the Force is concerned, she just can’t quite seem to _get_ the whole _healing_ thing. 

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t take long for Kylo to figure it out on his own.

“You don’t know how to Force heal properly,” he says. 

“I _do_ ,” she insists, a little too quickly. With a sigh, she adds, “It just– it just doesn’t… _stick_. When I do it.”

“Stick,” he repeats, flat as a board.

Rey rolls her eyes, impatient. “Yes, stick. I have to keep, y’know… healing it. Over and over again.”

He gives her an odd look, then, tilting his head. She thinks he’s looked at her like this before, once, the first time their minds connected despite their physical bodies being separated by thousands of lightyears. And, just like then, Kylo looks both fascinated with and mystified by whatever he’s seeing. 

Absurdly, for the second time in one day cycle, Rey feels very much like a bug. 

(But not a stompable one, this time.)

After a long moment, Kylo nods once, confident in whatever it is he’s deduced. 

“So you’re using the Dark side.”

Her entire body flinches. “I am _not_ using the–” 

Rey’s not sure if she cuts herself off consciously, or if her sense of self-preservation does it for her. She knows he can feel her flurry of emotions right now – hell, Rey wouldn’t be shocked if the kriffing _lizards_ could feel her rioting emotions somehow, even inside their little Forceless bubbles. 

Kylo stalks closer, assessing. “You are, aren’t you?” he says – doesn’t ask, _says –_ too calm for comfort.

He’s clearly not trying to argue his point; he knows he’s already made it. 

“You’re ashamed when you need help, even from yourself, and that affects how you channel the Force.” Maybe he feels it through their connection, or maybe he sees it scrawled all over her face. Whichever way he’s parsed this information, he’s probably known from the moment he tried to help her stand.

His eyes don’t leave hers as he keeps speaking, and she thinks maybe he’s waiting for a reaction. “It’s why you can’t heal yourself through the Light. It’s why you’re angry at me for coming onto your ship, even though you’d be dead otherwise.”

“I’m _angry_ because I don’t understand _why_ you did it _._ ”

“No, that’s not it at all.” Kylo lowers himself until their eyes are level, Rey’s stomach drops under the weight of what he hasn’t even said yet.

“You’re not upset that I answered your call,” he says in a dangerously steady undertone. “No… you’re upset at yourself for calling for anyone at all. Of course, it doesn’t help that you reached for _me_ , of all people. That I know how _desperately_ you _needed_ m–”

“Can you help heal me, or not?” Rey blurts, desperate to stop him from finishing his sentence, as though preventing him from giving that last little word voice will somehow make the truth behind the statement less real to the both of them. 

He searches her eyes, takes a deep breath, and Rey wonders if he’s weighing whether or not the effort is worth it. “I can.”

She only speaks once he’s turned toward her ankle, looking at the thin rivulets of blood trickling from the tiny puncture marks.

“You said I was using the Dark,” she says, not willing to bring her voice above a murmur. “I thought only Lightsiders could Force heal.”

Kylo’s hand, which had started to float ominously in her general direction, stills before dropping back down to his thigh. He traps her under his gaze once again. “Who’s teaching you? About the Force, about what you're capable of?”

She blinks. “I have the sacred Jedi texts, from the giant tree.”

From the way Kylo’s brows knit together, she can only assume that the sacred book tree on Ahch-To is an anomaly, and that sacred book-wielding trees are not, in fact, the common fixture of Jedi life that she thought they were.

Kylo shakes his head a little, either in disagreement or to clear it of tree-related thoughts. “You can’t learn the ways of the Force through theoretical knowledge alone. You need practical application. I asked you _who_ is teaching you, Rey.”

Rey feels her body stiffen, and knows there’s no way on this accursed planet that he didn’t catch it. She juts her chin out nevertheless, refusing to let him see any more cracks in her composure. “It’s none of your business, _Kylo_.” 

His eyes are flitting back and forth between hers, scrutinizing. Rey can practically _see_ the gears turning in his head, and she briefly, _horrifyingly_ , considers knocking him out with the Force before he can inevitably come to the accurate conclusion.

“Nobody instructed you, after Skywalker.”

It’s not a question.

“I managed just fine _before_ Luke trained me, as I’m sure you remember,” she defends, gesturing toward his face. “You have the souvenir to prove it.”

Unthinkingly, Rey goes to cross her arms, remembering the wounds on her sternum and shoulder blade a half-second too late, when she feels the telltale pull of fresh wounds opening all over again. 

She completes the movement through sheer willpower and a wince. “I can hold my own just fine, thank you very much,” she sniffs.

Kylo blinks at her. It’s a purposeful blink. A discomforting blink. A blink that Rey has no idea how to read, and leaves her even _more_ flustered when he follows it with, “I assume you’re working up to holding your own against rocks, then.”

“ _Excuse_ me?!” Rey splutters, completely and utterly affronted. “If you’d let me take your lightsaber with me, that _thing_ wouldn’t have been able to dragged me across the rocks in the _first_ place, you condescending, bloggin-brained son of a–”

Her artful insult is cut off by the feeling of a quite honestly _offensively_ large hand landing on her injured ankle. Kylo, it seems, has decided to stop analyzing her knowledge of Force healing and get right to it, so to speak.

“Don’t talk,” is all he says, decidedly not looking at her as he adjusts his hand with strangely-focused precision. It wraps around the circumference of her upper ankle, right above her boot where the creature had managed to pierce skin. His hand easily covers the entire injury, middle finger overlapping with his thumb where they meet, and _that’s…_ nope.

_Absolutely_ not _._

She tries to distract herself with whatever’s occupying _his_ mind, but her attempt to poke around his thoughts is swiftly rebuffed.

“Stop it.”

He sounds a little put-out, and Rey would find it funny if she wasn’t holding her breath waiting for… something, literally anything, to happen.

“Nothing’s happening.”

The line of his shoulders tenses. “I _know_. Stop talking.”

Rey opens her mouth to keep, in fact, talking, but quickly thinks better of it. If he can actually heal her _and_ make it stick, she might as well take advantage of it. Hell, maybe she could try to learn something as she watches.

Unfortunately, without the distraction of conversation, her thoughts swiftly jump back to the absurdly large hand on her ankle. 

She’s practically held his hand before (though _that_ was _Ben’s_ hand, specifically), so she’s not sure why she’s so enthralled now. But, back then, she was less focused on his actual hand against hers than she was on the ephemeral vision she saw of them, together. And the very real the wonder she was feeling – the wonder _he_ was feeling, too – at their shared longing to connect with each other, to know each other, to _have_ –

Rey’s strange reminiscing is, blessedly, interrupted by a wave of warmth emanating from where he’s touching and traveling all over her. It’s a feeling too soothing to burn and too all-consuming to be from the heat of his palm alone. And with it, a calmness wraps around her – not quite penetrating her own feelings, but rather forming a protective layer over her.

There’s surprise running through the bond, and she’s unsure whose it is. If it’s hers, or his, or _theirs_.

When it’s over, he takes his hand off of her ankle, but he doesn’t move to stand. 

“How did you do that? With your–” Rey gestures to his whole body, and realizes she needs to be a little more specific. “I know there’s a _balance_. That both the Light and the Dark can exist together, and that Force users don’t have to channel _only_ the Light or _only_ the Dark. I just didn’t think, y’know, someone like you–”

“You didn’t think someone like _me_ , what _?_ ” Kylo interjects, jerking his eyes up to look at her, demeanor changing like the flick of an invisible switch. The calm that had surrounded her is yanked away, without ceremony. “You didn’t think _someone like me_ was capable of healing you? Of _wanting_ to heal you?”

_Kriff_. She should have waited until he healed her _other_ wound, before asking.

“You didn’t think that people who use the Dark side could use the Light in the same way that Lightsiders, like you, use the Dark,” his voice gets harsher right alongside his words. “Because people like you don’t think people like me are capable of doing something good without corrupting it entirely.”

Rey swallows. “I didn’t say that.”

She knows he’s alone in his own head now, but she wonders if his words are entirely his own. And she’s not sure if it’s better or worse if they are.

He’s retreated inward, Rey thinks, to some space she can’t quite follow. 

He keeps going.

“It’s easy to forgive a touch of the Dark in someone who’s inherently _good._ But it doesn’t go both ways, does it, Rey?” He leans in a bit closer, then, and she leans back a bit, in turn. “Because _people like me_ just aren’t capable of doing something _good_. And if they do, it becomes something tainted, something _dirty_.”

Rey’s stomach does a strange flip just then, a little dangerously.

“You know I don’t think that. Not about you.” she says, despite herself, despite everything. “I just… wanted to know how.”

He just… stares, for a moment.

“Would you like a step-by-step demonstration from me right now? Behind your back, where you can't see? As the wound festers and you keep bleeding through your shirt?”

After about one and a half seconds of painstaking consideration, Rey lands on a slightly hesitant, “Probably not?”

“Okay.”

She thinks they’re both relieved when shakes his head a little and stands, breaking eye contact. 

As she’s rotating her newly-healed ankle in fascination, he moves to kneel behind her and obviously eyeing the long gash on her right shoulder blade. He’s obviously eyeing the gash there, but he isn’t _doing_ anything about it.

When he healed her ankle, he was touching his bare skin to hers, and Rey thinks that, maybe, that might be necessary for this whole _healing_ thing to work. Maybe he’s just _sitting_ _there_ , emotions suddenly undetectable, because he’s trying to figure out a way to tell her that. With the collar of her vest crawling most of the way up the back of her neck, he wouldn’t be able to make skin-to-skin contact without either asking her to take her vest off, or ripping the sole unsubmerged shirt she has on this entire planet.

Rey makes the choice for him – for _her_ , really, because there’s no way she’s letting her only clothing get destroyed because he’s trying to perform some mockery of _politeness._

“Fine,” she huffs. “It needs to be direct contact, right?” She crosses her arms in front of her, ignoring the way the scratch on her shoulder pulls with the movement. She’s barely pulled it up a centimeter before he seems to catch up with her.

His reaction is _fast_ – almost comically so.

The emotional wall he’d put up comes crashing down and his end of the bond a truly inspiring wave of _visceral_ panic, and he grabs the bottom edge of her top and _tugs_ it down with an urgency she can quite literally feel, as her upper body jerks back a little with the sheer force of the movement.

“ _Please_ don’t,” he says, _with feeling_.

Rey is almost offended at how passionately he clearly feels about not seeing any more of her skin than absolutely necessary. _Almost._

“I thought–”

“No. It doesn’t,” he says, terse as ever, and she feels the weight of his giant palm on her back, _over her shirt_ , right over the gash. It stings a little with the contact.

She can’t see this one, for obvious reasons, but now that he’s touching it, it definitely stings far more than the one on her ankle, and she curses the hellishly sharp rock that somehow managed to dig further into her skin than the teeth of the creature that had been dragging her into the water by the _foot_ , trying to bodily drag her in with it.

She thinks that, later, she’ll probably be more than a little horrified about what just happened to her down there.

“Can you... not.”

Confused, Rey asks, “Can I not _what?"_

A tiny puff of air meets her back, like he’s just sighed through his nose. “Stop thinking about what happened. And the fear. That you felt.”

The last bit is added in a rush, and she naturally assumes there’s some Force-related reason behind it.

“Is that how healing with the Light works?” Rey asks, wide-eyed and genuinely curious. “Are you using my emotions, or my memories?”

“No, it’s the–” he stops, sighs. There’s a brief moment where he’s almost _certainly_ grinding his teeth. “It’s a connection. A… directed feeling. From one person to another.”

And, really, what kind of answer is _that?_

It’s a very vague, very _curious_ answer, is what it is. And Rey doesn’t have time to unpack it before he presses down a little harder and starts to heal her again.

It feels much the same here as it did around her ankle, but the feeling of warmth feels like it reverberates through her entire chest, this time, and the calm wraps a little tighter, feels like it might stay a little longer. 

And there, under the warmth and the calm, Rey senses a two-way surge of relief through the bond, from distinct points of origin on either side: her relief at the last of her pain ebbing, and his relief at his ability to take all of it away from her.

“You did it,” she says when it’s over, mostly unnecessarily. He knows. He was there _._

“I’m not completely incapable of connecting to the Light.”

She can’t help the way she can _feel_ his words skitter down her spine. He’s just so unnecessarily _close_ right now; he’s practically breathing down her neck, or a least it feels like it. 

“I know. I’ve felt the Light in you before,” Rey says. She thinks she might owe this openness to the relative safety of an exchange where she doesn’t have to look him in the eye. “I felt it strongly enough to risk everything for you, once. To _believe_ in you.”

“And now?”

Her first impulse screams at her to reassure him. To tell him that nothing is unforgivable, not permanently; that he doesn’t need to punish himself; that he can still do, _be_ , good; that if his mother knew they were here, together, she would be begging Rey to bring her boy back home.

Her second impulse kicks her first impulse square in the teeth.

“You try to kill everyone who tries to help you.” _Except me_ , she doesn’t say. 

She doesn’t have to.

“Not you.”

“You killed your own _father_ in cold blood.”

The air seems to still, then.

“I did,” he says, far too easily. “And it brought me to where I am now.

He’s obviously not talking about the planet they’re on. With the way he’s saying it – so precisely it might as well be practiced, recited – she assumes he’s referring to his triumph over his old master, over his old _self_ , and his subsequent rule over the entire galaxy.

But all Rey can think about is how completely and utterly _alone_ he is.

What he says makes her think about the avalanches of loneliness that she’s felt in the year since they last parted, through the bond she could never quite manage to close completely. It makes her think about how, with the death of his father, Kylo Ren had culled yet another one of the few souls remaining in the entire galaxy who still love and believe in Ben Solo – even if just a little.

It makes her think about how she’s relying on her loving friends to drop everything to rescue her, while he’s probably relying on a First Order officer to spot a blip on the radar, maybe file a report.

He’s just… alone, in a way she hasn’t felt in nearly a year, since she stared at her own reflection hundreds of times over and fell into a feeling of isolation colder and deeper than the damp, dark cave itself... only to be pulled out of that feeling by… well, by _him_.

Her friends have largely taken on that mantle, now, even if they don’t quite understand what, exactly, they’re pulling her out _of_. At least not in the same unflinching, innate way that he did.

She wonders who the last person to pull _him_ out was. If, maybe, it was _her_ – all those months ago.

And it’s not like Rey has sympathy for him. Not _really_. Not anymore. 

It’s just that… it’s sad. 

_Objectively-speaking._

She realizes, far too late, that if he could sense the recollection of her own fear, earlier, he must have been a spectator to her entire line of thought, just then.

If he did, though, he gives no indication. He just stands, walks right past her as she mumbles a “thanks” that she’s unsure he hears at all, and walks out to the mouth of the cave, looking out at the lake stretching out in front of them. It looks a little sinister, now.

“It’s the nighttime, isn’t it?” she asks, already pretty sure of the answer. “That… thing, that species, must be nocturnal. That's why we didn't see it during the crash lizards don't run around at night.”

He’s not looking at her, but she can see him nod. “Most likely. The lizards' Force-suppression must be an evolutionary response, just like the ysalamiri adapted in order to hide from their own predators. This lizard species' predators, like that _thing_ , must use the Force to hunt as well." He pauses. "I don't know why I didn't think of it before."

A sense of dread comes over Rey. “Does that mean there are other creatures on this planet? That use the Force to hunt? That could find us?”

“I don’t know.”

His answer lingers in the air, hanging in the air like the blade of a guillotine.

Then, apropos nothing, he says, “You didn’t try to kill me, earlier, when you had my lightsaber.”

_“Had_ ” is a strong word, she thinks, particularly given that she immediately whipped the hilt at him, like it burned her.

“I thought about it.” She didn’t. At _all_ , actually. He surely knows that already. “But then I realized that your mother probably wouldn’t be too happy with me if I did.”

Kylo laughs, but the sound is entirely bereft of humor. “She would be just fine. She could easily write it off as a _painful, necessary sacrifice_.”

He spits those last words out like they carry a sour taste, and she’s pretty sure she knows why. They’re achingly familiar to her as well, and drag up flashes of being ushered – gently, _apologetically_ – into the darkness, into hiding, for a moment, for many moments after that.

_“I know this is a painful sacrifice, but it’s necessary.”_

Rey wonders if all parents burn particular words into their children’s minds, or if Ben Solo branded those all on his own.

“So that part of your dream _was_ a memory,” Kylo says, curious eyes on her.

She tenses. For the briefest of moments, she’d let herself forget about _why_ she went down to the lake in the first place, and the _other_ part of the dream, and that latent shame comes up with a bit of a sting.

“I’m going to sleep,” she announces before laying down. Admittedly, the cape _does_ feel better than the cold and unforgiven rock floor of the cave. 

Figuring she deserves this much after everything this planet’s fauna – and her own subconscious – put her through tonight, she adds, “And I’ve bled all over your cape, so you can’t take it back, now. Those are the rules."

His expression looks both intrigued and a little grossed out. 

And that’s just how she wants to leave it for the night.

*****

  
Rey wakes for the briefest of moments, some time later. She knows it hasn’t been _too_ long, given that the sky is still a deep wine and Kylo is still sitting right where he was before, either oblivious or uncaring to her waking.

_But he_ does _care,_ she drowsily thinks. _Just like Ben cared._

She knows she felt… _something_ for Ben Solo, embedded in a connection that went deeper than the Force bond. And she knows that Ben felt that same _something_ too. 

Her half-awake brain jumps to what little Kylo told her about healing through the Light. How he couldn't heal her when she was thinking about her fear. How he said he was using a “ _directed feeling”._

She wonders what it would mean, should Kylo feel what Ben felt.

She thinks he might.

And, the thing is, she knows – she _knows_ – that people who know Kylo as "Ben" get hurt. People who _believe_ in him get hurt. Rey watched him kill his father and has been privy to the way his mother’s soul dies just a little more, every single day, as she waits for that little shred of hope in her son to be vindicated. 

Rey herself feels hopeful about a great many things, almost recklessly so. But, from years of experience, she knows that it’s an incredibly fine line to walk, that line between believing in people and believing in their potential. She's well-practiced in the art of believing in someone's potential, marking the days that go by as they fail to become the person she knows – _hopes_ – they could be, if they tried. 

She made that mistake once with _him_ – and she immediately told herself that she would never put herself through that pain again. She _promised_ herself that she wouldn’t.

But, as Rey slowly falls back into sleep, she looks at the outline of a broad shoulder against the night sky as he leans against the opening of the alcove. His knees are drawn up to his chest, forearms resting atop them as he holds what looks to be some sort of vaguely-begrudging vigil, and – gods help her – all she sees is _Ben_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **cw for ~a touch of gore~:**  
>  Rey gets jumped by a giant, toothy eel thing and ends up with some (non-life-threatening) injuries, which are subsequently healed. The wounds aren't described in graphic detail imo, but proceed with caution!  
> ******************
> 
> Fun(?) fact: the "Rey has impure thoughts about Ben and grabs a Force-suppressing lizard to keep him out" thing was one of the first ideas I had for this fic. It is the birthplace of this silly little space dummy adventure. The foundation upon which Whatever The Fuck This Is rests.
> 
> Promising a specific date for the next update was Decidedly Not A Very Good Idea last time, in terms of stress level (which likely contributed to the some of the delay), so I'll just leave it at: next update ASAP :)  
> I've edited some previous chapter notes re: posting dates because it looks like fALsE aDvErtiSiNg now and I'm EmBaRrAsSed.


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